With Foot Firmly in Mouth

There is more than one kind of history. 

One is the kind where armies march, treaties are signed, and professors write books with subtitles like A Reconsideration of the Strategic Context.  Another kind is where someone opens their mouth, a word wobbles slightly to the left, and the whole world decides that a head of state has just confessed to being a pastry.

Let’s begin with the most famous baked good in the history of diplomacy, .a story every reader has heard whether they wanted to or not.

In 1963, President John F.  Kennedy stood in West Berlin and delivered one of the great Cold War soundbites: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” The line was meant as solidarity: I am a Berliner, i.e., I am one of you, i.e., your cause is my cause.

Then, somewhere along the way, English speakers turned it into: “I am a jelly donut.”

This is one of those stories that refuses to die because it is perfectly shaped to satisfy a certain human need: the need to see the mighty humbled by a small linguistic banana peel.  Presidents, after all, should not be permitted to stride through history like marble statues.  We prefer them with a bit of powdered sugar on the lapel and their foot, if not in their mouth, at least in a bucket.

The problem is that this joke is largely an urban legend.  In Berlin, the pastry you and I might call a “Berliner” is commonly called something else, and, more importantly, Kennedy’s phrasing is defensible in context.  In other words, it worked as intended for the people listening, which is the whole point of communication, and also the whole reason this story is annoying.

But the legend persists because it highlights something true: language is treacherous, even when it’s not technically wrong.  The ear wants what the ear wants, and the public loves a translation that produces an accidental confession of being a donut.

And once you realize that, you start noticing how often world events hang on the fragile thread of words.

Now and then, the translation isn’t a charming myth.  Sometimes it is real, and sometimes it is magnificent in its wrongness.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter visited Poland, and his remarks were translated into Polish in a way that turned perfectly normal diplomatic sentiments into something… spicier.  Accounts vary in the exact phrasing, but the gist is that the President meant to say that he liked the Poles, but the translation said that he had a more intimate yearning for the Polish people that no president should ever express in public, at least not without a slow jazz soundtrack and a licensing agreement.  Perhaps the verbal slip would not have been so funny if Carter hadn’t just the year before during an interview with Playboy Magazine hadn’t admitted that he had “lust in his heart.”

This is not merely funny: in-on  it is instructive.  Translation is not a word-for-word substitution game.  It is real-time cognitive gymnastics performed in front of an audience, with the added delight that the audience will only notice you exist when you fail.

Interpreters are like football referees: if you’re talking about them, something has gone wrong.  And this brings us to the first great law of international communication: The more important the moment, the more it depends on the least glamorous person in the room.  Which is a comforting thought—unless, of course, you are the least glamorous person in the room.

If Carter’s Polish mishap was the diplomatic equivalent of slipping on a banana peel, Nikita Khrushchev’s most famous line was more like slipping on a banana peel while enthusiastically waving a lit road flare.

In 1956, less than a year after the Soviet Union had crushed the Hungarian Revolution—at a moment when the Cold War was running particularly hot—Khrushchev managed to assure the West that history itself would be doing the burying.

“We will bury you” landed in Western ears like a threat engraved on a missile.  It sounded very much as if the Soviets were advancing with a gun in one hand and a shovel in the other and saw no reason to be subtle about either.

But Russian idiom does not always map neatly onto English panic.  Many have argued that a more accurate sense was something closer to: we will outlast you, or we will live to see you buried, or history will bury your system.  It’s still not exactly a Hallmark card, but it’s a different species of menace—more ideological boasting than literal burial arrangements.

Here’s the point: idioms are loaded weapons.  In your own language, they’re harmless because everyone knows the safety is on.  In another language, they can go off in the translator’s hands and put a hole through the wall.

So, if you’re ever tempted to spice up a diplomatic message with a colorful figure of speech, remember: what’s clever in one tongue can become nuclear in another.

Some translation stories are funny, some are scary, and some are both, depending on how much you enjoy contemplating the fragility of civilization.

In late July 1945, the Allied Powers issued the Potsdam Declaration, citing the generous terms for Japan to surrender and end World War II.  In Japan, many of the top leaders, including Emperor Hirohito, were inclined to accept the terms subject to a few clarifications, but the response included the work mokusatsu,  黙殺; lit. "killing with silence". 

While exactly what the Japanese meant will be argued forever, it is possible that Japan meant to imply “acceptance without comment.”  There is no doubt however how that the United States interpreted it as “rejection by ignoring.”  The mokusatsu episode is often incorrectly retold as though Japan insulted the United States and the United States responded with atomic weapons. 

The United States did not decide to use the atomic bomb because of the Japanese response, instead they saw no reason to stop the already in motion plan to use the nuclear weapons.  By late July 1945, the machinery of war was no longer waiting to be offended—it was waiting for a surrender.

Still, it is a sobering reminder that ambiguity is not neutral.  When you are speaking to someone armed, nervous, and already halfway convinced you mean the worst, an ambiguous word is a match tossed near gasoline.

In everyday life, ambiguity is charming.  It makes poetry possible.  In geopolitics, ambiguity can become a Rorschach test that the other side fills in with their nightmares.

At this point you may be thinking: why does the jelly donut story outlive the truth? Why does “we will bury you” echo louder than the nuance? Why do we cherish linguistic bloopers?

Because these stories serve three human cravings:

1.They make the powerful relatable.  A president who can accidentally call himself a pastry becomes, briefly, the kind of person who also once walked into the wrong restroom.

2.They offer the comfort of comedy.  History is terrifying.  We like our terror with a punchline, preferably one involving baked goods.

3.They warn us without preaching.  “Be careful with language” is boring advice.  “A mistranslation can make you a donut in front of the world” is advice you’ll remember.

And there’s another reason, too: these stories highlight the old truth that language is not a transparent window.  It’s a stained-glass mosaic of culture, habit, and assumption.  You can see through it, but the colors distort everything.

If you take anything from these tales, let it be gratitude for the people who stand between leaders and international chaos.

A skilled interpreter is not “fluent.” They are a professional mind-reader who processes meaning, tone, and intent, while also anticipating how a phrase will land in the other culture.  They are constantly choosing between “literal” and “faithful,” knowing that those are often enemies.

Sometimes the faithful translation sounds less dramatic than the literal one, and the press will punish you for it.  Sometimes the literal translation is accurate in words but disastrous in meaning, and history will punish you for that, too.

In other words, it’s a job where the only way to win is to disappear.

Which brings us, at last, to the king who could not disappear if he tried, because he was, allegedly, a rabbit.

In 1806, Napoleon installed his brother Louis as King of Holland.  Louis, apparently attempting to be charming, tried to address the Dutch in their own language.  The Dutch word for king is koning.  The word for rabbit is konijn.  Those words are close enough that, in the mouth of a nervous foreign monarch, one can hop into the place of the other.

Thus the famous anecdote: instead of saying something like “I am your king,” Louis effectively announced: “I am your rabbit.”

Whether he said it exactly that way, or whether the story grew in the retelling, is part of its charm.  These lines often do grow, because people love them and repeat them, and repetition turns a wink into a brass plaque.

But the underlying truth is timeless: learning a language is an act of humility, and humility is not a natural posture for emperors, kings, and presidents.  When they attempt it anyway, the universe occasionally rewards the effort with a joke that lasts two centuries.

And honestly? Of all the things a ruler might accidentally confess to being, a rabbit is not the worst.