SILBERBAUER SAYS:

James Randi accused of murder?  

Klaus Silberbauer / Friday, July 28, 2006

Marion Dampier Jeans is a Danish self proclaimed "psychic", who has done some appearances on Danish television in the no brain entertainment show "Åndernes magt" ("Powers of the Spirits"). In this show she walks around seeing dead people all over the place and telling them to go away. Really lame, believe me.

Of course Dampier Jeans isn't especially fond of the illusionist James Randi, who has made it his mission to debunk so called "psychics", "media" and other charlatans. Dampier Jeans is making a pretty good living on making people believe in ghosts, spirits an other kinds of woo woo so guys like Randi are indeed a liability to her business.

Instead of writing her own piece on Randi (guess that'll put too much of a strain on her intellect), she's decided to translate an old and pretty hostile article by Sam Nicholls from 1991 for publication on her website.

Unfortunately, Dampier Jeans is not at very skilled translator and among several other linguistic blunders she misses a very important detail in one of Nicholls sentences:

when asked recently if he would apologise in the event of a psychic being killed under his control, Randi snarled facetiously, "I'd say a little more than that (sorry)";

In itself a stupid question. Nothing in Randi's experiments would kill anyone - it's like the old "Have you stopped beating up your wife?"-question. No wonder Randi snarles.

In Dampier Jeans' miserable translation this turns into:

da han blev spurgt for nyligt om han ville undskylde den episode hvor et medie blev dræbt under hans kontrol, Randi snerrede føjeligt: "Jeg ville sige lidt mere end det (det må du undskylde)";

In English this means: "When recently asked if he would apologise for that incident in which a medium was killed under his control, Randi snarled indulgently "I'd say a little more than that (I'm sorry)".

"In the event of..." implies a hypothetical situation but Dampier Jeans obviously can't read English very well. In the Danish translation this hypothetical death of a medium turns into a real incident, and a pretty horrible accusation of something close to murder. (Besides that the Danish grammar is pretty messed up, but that's besides the point here).

Well... that's one way to frame someone you disagree with.