Institutional terminology

Submitted by Llewellyn BROWN (France), Jul 9, 2009 at 16:51

Mahmud Abbas' official title, if I am not mistaken, is "chairman". No problem in Hebrew ("yoshev rosh"). In French, that translates as "président" : the same term for the "chairman" of any form of organized meeting and… the head of a republic. It is a lexical confusion that is widely exploited in the French media : Yassir Arafat, followed by Mahmud Abbas, are called "président", as if they were heads of some sort of country or state…

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".