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2 September 2012 - 15:51

Head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Ezzatollah Zarghami has accepted a mistake in the translation of the Egyptian president’s address to the 16th Summit of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran.

“The shortcoming was only in the one case of translating the name for Syria into Bahrain in one of the [IRIB] television channels,” Zarghami said on Sunday.

He added that, while Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was addressing the summit, a technical mistake occurred during the IRIB Channel 1’s live broadcast of the speech and therefore another translator was replaced, who made the mistake, Mehr news agency reported.

However, Western media were soon to seize upon the error, the IRIB chief complained.

He noted, “The Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) bore the main responsibility for the broadcast of the summit’s proceedings,” adding that the channel’s coverage of the summit was broadcast “both at home and abroad free of any [such] mistranslations.”

Zarghami stressed that “Iran’s media coverage [of the event] was so broad and perfect” that the Western media’s attempts to abuse the shortcoming was to no avail.

On August 30, in his much-awaited address to the summit, the newly-elected Egyptian president said that those who are struggling for freedom are the “Palestinians and Syrians.” However, his speech was mistranslated by mistake when the interpreter said “Palestinians and Bahrainis.”

On Saturday, a statement by Bahrain's government said Manama had filed a formal complaint against Iran over the mistake.

News ID 182593