On this morning, while I was listening to the news on one of the TV channels, a political analysis segment caught my attention. It was discussing the ongoing war between Israel and Iran and its possible implications for the region. The topic itself was neither new nor surprising—war, threats, and exchanged statements—but what really drew my attention was a small linguistic act with profound impact: simultaneous translation.
Because I have a long-standing and ever-renewed passion for translation and linguistic studies, my ear picks up things that others might overlook. For me, language is not merely a vehicle for transmitting information, but a living being pulsing with multiplicity and interpretation—a space of hidden interactions between words and cultures, between meaning and context, between speaker and listener. In this framework, translation represents for me a precise mirror reflecting the fragility of meaning, the power of words, and the human ability to navigate between linguistic worlds—gracefully or clumsily.
In this light, the phrase the interpreter uttered while translating the American expert’s words wasn’t just a passing slip. For me, it was a moment of reflection—a moment in which I saw how translation can unexpectedly open a door to new meanings and confront us with the riddle of meaning when creativity mingles with error, and irony with eloquence, and mistake with metaphor.
One of the American experts was speaking about possible military scenarios, and the simultaneous interpreter was working with clarity and speed. Suddenly, the interpreter said: “America will attack Iran with pharmaceutical attacks.”
I paused—not because I was frightened by “attacks,” but because I was struck by this phrase: “pharmaceutical attacks”!
At first, the expression seemed strange, unfamiliar—even amusing. Yet at the same time, it stirred deep linguistic questions in me, and prompted reflection on the relationship between language and meaning, between original and translation, between what is intended and what is said.
It was clear the interpreter had made a mistake in translating the original term, which was likely “biological attacks” or perhaps “chemical attacks.” Here we can see how literal translation, or a lack of contextual knowledge, can lead to unintended new meanings.
But the deeper question is: was this merely a “mistake”? Or did it, unwittingly, reveal to us the creative power of language? For as strange as “pharmaceutical attacks” sounds, it carries within it a range of mental images: attacks delivered in doses, slowly, through medicines that harm rather than heal, or via the dissemination of biological agents used as weapons rather than cures.
Linguistically, what happened can be considered a “translation slip,” but this slip produces new eloquence. In linguistics, what is known as “malapropism” or the mistaken use of words can reveal unexpected dimensions of meaning. And translation, as we know from Eugene Nida’s theory of “Dynamic Equivalence,” is not just about transferring words but about recreating the psychological and conceptual impact of the original text in a new language.
In this context, the phrase “pharmaceutical attacks” may not be an accurate translation, but it created a new metaphor, rich in semiotic depth. The pharmacy—normally a space associated with treatment and healing—turns in translation into a battlefield of aggression and control. This in itself reflects the tension in our world between what is humane and what is ideological.
Between fidelity to the original text and creativity in translation lie the major challenges of translation studies. Some insist on strict literalness; others argue that the deeper meaning is what deserves translation. In this sense, error can become an opportunity to reveal language’s possibilities, and the tension between signifier and signified.
In translation theory, scholars distinguish between “word-for-word” translation and “sense-for-sense” translation. Had the interpreter understood the military context of the speech, he might have used terms like “biological attacks” or “chemical attacks.” But he chose “pharmaceutical,” inadvertently opening a new window of interpretation: the manipulation of drugs, the use of medicine as a weapon, disease as an instrument of dominance.
What happened that morning was not just a fleeting linguistic incident, but a moment in which language revealed itself as a living organism—one that sometimes stumbles, but in its stumble shows us new paths for understanding. Translation, in this sense, is not merely the transfer of words but an encounter between two worlds, a test of language’s power to carry meaning without losing its soul.
“Pharmaceutical attacks” may have been just a slip, but in its slip it created a new text, almost poetic—a text that makes us pause and reflect. One might say: when war is redefined with the tools of healing, it is a time we must learn to read with new linguistic eyes.
With regards,
Dr. Qassem Muhammad Koufahi
Novelist and Literary Critic
