Taken out of Context!

I have always felt rather sceptical when a politician who has been criticized for something that he has said has responded by saying that his words have presented 'out of context'.
However, last week I had the opportunity of a couple of days work transcribing Hebrew into English for a TV documentary. It was the first time I had seen how a TV film was created - the editing - translating - transcribing - commenting etc.
It was an eye-opener for me and removed much of the scepticism alluded to above. I had never been involved in anything like this before and had no idea about what goes into the making of a newsworthy television documentary.
This was the setup. The Reporter did not speak the language of the country from which he was reporting. So he was provided with an interpreter who provided him with a real-time translation. The Reporter then 'summarized' the interpreter's words for the benefit of the television audience. So there were two transformations of the original into the audio which would be broadcast.

The Editor had at his disposal both the original words, the Interpreter's words, and the Reporter's words. However, the Editor not speaking the source language, had no way of evaluating the accuracy of the Reporter's words. So here I, the Translator, was brought in to provide an independent translation of the original words, so that the accuracy of the Reporter's work could be evaluated. It was hard but fascinating work. The Video Editor had at his disposal multiple data streams which he could manipulate at will, cutting and pasting, so that he could 'mix and match' audio and video. He could put anything into anybody's mouth! This was what I meant when I said that I could now imagine a justified complaint of 'words being taken out of context'.
However, in fact I was most impressed by the Editor's search for accuracy and truth. In each case my translation was referred to in order to see how well it matched the real-time Interpreter's words, and how well the Reporter had summarized the Interpreter's words. Where I thought that the Reporter's summary was not wholly warranted by the original the Editor was willing to make changes.
It was an enlightening experience which provided me with a lot of respect for the creators of News Reports. Let's hope that they all work to the high standards to which I can testify in this case.