Eur4.2 million deal with bankrupt business: Prime Minister says “mistakes” were made and blames The Others

This “mistakes” thing has just got to go. The English word is completely wrong in contexts like this, because it is a literal translation from the Maltese ‘zbalja’.

In English a mistake is just that: a mistake. It is not deliberate wrong-doing, planned, negotiated and executed over months or weeks.

The concept of ‘zbalja’, which classifies wrong-doing as ‘mistakes’ is entirely cultural, which in turn is reflected in the language, Maltese.

The cultural concept of wrong-doing, corruption or crime as ‘zbalja’ does not exist in the culture which produced English, and so it does not translate into English either.

If I type ‘where’ instead of ‘were’ – that’s a mistake. If a negotiate a deal of Eur4.2 million with 5% commission to the broker who also happens to be a 50% shareholder on the deal, and do so over weeks, with meetings and discussions and emails, that is not a mistake.

That is wrong-doing.