What did he actually say? About translation as politics and interpretation in factual literature

pages: 173-186

Abstract

Twenty years ago, Slobodan Milošević uttered a sentence which was afterwards repeated in the literature about the Yugoslav tragedy innummerable times. The sentence "Niko ne sme da vas bije" was directed to the Serb demonstrators in Kosovo. In this text, the author analyzes the ways this sentence was translated in factional literature (non-fiction literature: essays, newspaper article, history, biographies etc.) and shows that different versions, apart from being different lexically and semantically, influence the political interpretation and understanding of the Yugoslav conflict. This text poses another, maybe even more important question: are unprecise and wrong translations of Milošević's words a proof of what Georg Johannesen claimed - that faction is fiction. . Keywords: factual literature, translation, Slobodan Milošević, interpretation of the Yugoslav conflict, Kosovo war