Since no Filipino has come out to criticize the English translation of the Filipino phrase \u201cputang ina,\u201d made by the media, I am volunteering to do so.<\/p>\n
The said phrase was uttered by Philippine President Duterte and was translated by the media to mean \u201cson of a bitch\u201d causing President Obama to cancel his official meeting with Duterte. Even Joseph Connoly, who probably does not know a thing about the Filipino language, blindly and ignorantly echoes the same translation in his poem published in this newspaper on Sept. 14.<\/p>\n
The phrase \u201cputang ina\u201d is literally translated as \u201cbitch of the mother,\u201d which does not make any sense. But the genesis of the phrase used to be \u201cputa na ina,\u201d which translates as \u201cthe mother is a bitch\u201d or \u201cthe bitch is the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
The phrase is normally used as an interjection showing the speaker\u2019s determination to do what he says he wants to do. In the case of Duterte, he was using the interjection to show that he was strongly determined to reject any discussion with Obama with respect to his policy of extra judicial killings in his country.<\/p>\n
The phrase being correctly translated, Duterte is correct in saying that he did not say that Obama was \u201cson of a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reynaldo O. Yana<\/strong> Since no Filipino has come out to criticize the English translation of the Filipino phrase…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[13534,375],"class_list":["post-237101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor","tag-philippine-president-duterte","tag-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSaipan<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"