Monday, March 04, 2019
AMLO y los tontos
AMLO has a saying:
El poder atonta a los inteligentes y a los tontos los vuelve locos.
It doesn't seem to be a standard proverb; Google finds it only in AMLO's output.
He first 'quoted' it in response to the tiresome Acton thing, in an interview with a journalist.
El presidente Andrés Manuel López Obrador recordó que ayer el historiador y escritor Enrique Krauze habló sobre su gobierno en el Oslo Freedom Forum y mencionó la frase: “El poder corrompe y el poder absoluto corrompe absolutamente”. López Obrador dijo estar de acuerdo dicho, pero hay otro que le gusta más: “El poder atonta a los inteligentes y a los tontos los vuelve locos”.AMLO then clarified that he was contrasting intellectual power versus a more humble use of power to serve the people. My rudimentary Spanish doesn't catch subtlety or metaphor, so my brute-force rendition is: Power turns intellectuals into fools, and [then] the intellectuals drive fools crazy. Google Translate has: Power stuns the smart and fools drives them crazy. I think Google's machine misses the modern Latin American use of 'a' to mark the accusative. The fools in the second clause are the driven, not the drivers. My rendition does make sense, but I don't know if this is really what AMLO means. = = = = = Sidenote: Here's my preferred alternate to the tiresome Acton thing.
Labels: Language update
¶ 5:02 PM
