I wish, however, that somebody had told the Malaysian press that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, when he spoke to Singapore's Berita Harian last month about the Iskandar Development Region and other matters, had in fact spoken in English, not Malay.

Mr Lee had said, in English: 'It is one thing for the opposition party PAS to knock the Malaysian Prime Minister down, but when Umno leaders, especially from Johor, hit out in the same vein, potential investors from Singapore must seriously ask themselves when these attitudes will change, and how welcome their investments will be.'

The phrase 'knock...down' was translated in the Malay press as menjatuhkan. That in turn was translated in the Malaysian English press as 'topple', as in remove from power - which is precisely what menjatuhkan would mean in this context, only Mr Lee hadn't said 'topple'. From English to Malay to English - the final result was not anything like the original.

Ms Cheong Suk Wai, this newspaper's alert Assistant Foreign Editor, was the first to spot the error. The Straits Times duly reported it - many times - but to no avail. Malaysian commentators preferred their own mangled original - perhaps because it made for a better, more frothy, story line.

Mr Lee, they wanted to believe, had said that 'Umno leaders, especially from Johor', were out to 'topple' their leader, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. How dare he! This constitutes gross interference in Malaysia's internal affairs. Umno Youth Johor Baru passed a fierce resolution condemning him. He is mischievous. He is a troublemaker. He is 'senile', said Malaysian Deputy Information Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Mr Ahmad, like our excited young Italian, was misinformed, but unlike our Italian, preferred not to be informed of that fact. He is, no doubt, serving in the correct ministry.

'Knock down' is an idiomatic English phrase with no exact Malay equivalent. The closest equivalents, Ms Cheong thought, would be menjatuhkan maruah (literally 'cause one's dignity to fall'), or, to be more poetic, menjatuhkan air muka ('make one lose face'). We would never know what would have happened if the Malay press had translated 'knock down' correctly, or if the Malaysian English press had derived its English version directly from English, not via Malay. International relations can sometimes hang on such accidents in translation.

AND sometimes those accidents can be productive. Take, for instance, how the Chinese and American governments finessed the midair collision and emergency landing on Chinese soil of an American spy plane in 2001. Apologise, Beijing demanded - apologise for spying, apologise for using international airspace to spy on other countries, apologise for the collision, apologise for violating Chinese airspace in landing on Hainan island, just apologise abjectly all round. The United States government, of course, refused to do that. How to resolve the impasse? Answer: mistranslate strategically.

The US government expressed regret for the incident - in English. But in its own Chinese translation of its English statement, it used a somewhat stronger term, the syllable qian, in reference to the spy plane's unauthorised landing, but nothing else, reported The New York Times. Qian, according to Princeton University's Professor Perry Link, a scholar of Chinese language and literature, did 'imply that the speaker acknowledged wrongdoing', and conveyed something more heartfelt than simple 'regret'. And when the Chinese government offered its own Chinese translation of the US statement, it sprinkled the qian all over the text, suggesting the US had acknowledged wrongdoing for good deal more than just the unauthorised landing. From English ('regret') to Chinese (qian) to even more Chinese (qian, qian, qian, ad infinitum) - thus face was saved all round.

MM LEE said recently that the ability of Singaporeans to speak English as well as their mother tongue will give them a cultural and economic advantage in a globalised world. This is true. Precisely because they can speak more than one language, Singaporeans may be in a position to help corporations avoid translation howlers. Consider the following examples, culled from various sources:

When Coca Cola first entered the Chinese market, it called its drink ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Chinese characters the company chose for those phonetic sounds meant 'bite the wax tadpole' or 'female horse stuffed with wax'. Coca Cola scrambled when it discovered its mistake and came up with ko-kou-ko-le, meaning 'happiness in the mouth'.

Other corporations have committed similar howlers. Pepsi, in Taiwan, was said to have mistranslated its slogan 'Come alive with the Pepsi Generation' as 'Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead'. Kentucky Fried Chicken had its 'finger-lickin' good' read in Chinese as 'eat your fingers off'. Both could have used the services of a Singaporean equally at home in English and Mandarin.

Still, there are occasions when mutual incomprehension can be useful. There is the example of qian above. Another, perhaps apocryphal, is this:

Chinese diplomat, toasting his American counterpart: 'Up your bottoms.' American diplomat, returning the toast: 'Up yours too.'

There have been occasions in the recent past, I confess, when I have wished Singaporean diplomats could have offered a similar return to some of their regional counterparts - diplomatically, of course, in Tamil perhaps, very friendly-like.

janadas@sph.com.sg