Recently, the internet world was in an uproar including the legendary Iman when they read
the post on the latest trend “Slave Earrings” on Vogue Italia. The renowned fashion
publication featured a woman wearing large gold hoops and called the trend
“Slave Earrings.” [See photo below.]
The accompanying post with this photo directly mentioned American
Slavery as stated here:
“Jewelry has always flirted with circular shapes, especially for use in making earrings. The most classic models are the slave and creole styles in gold hoops. If the name brings to the mind the decorative traditions of the women of color who were brought to the southern United States during the slave trade, the latest interpretation is pure freedom.”
Vogue Italia changed the title of the trend story to “Ethnic
Earrings” on Monday afternoon and left the same accompanying post with the photo . Then, the editor Franca Sozzani issued a statement apologizing for the gaffe claiming that “slave” was a heinous mis-translation from “ethnic.”
She also goes further and states:
“We apologize for the inconvenience. It is matter of really bad translation from Italian into English…The Italian word which defines those kind of earrings should have instead be translated into ethnical style earrings. Again, we are sorry about this mistake which we have just amended in the website”
Hmmm. Was there a mis-translation with the accompanying text that
correlated so well with the title “Slave Earrings?”
Iman openly spoke against the apology on mis-translation and states according
to fashionista.com:
“I didn’t like it. Slave does not make it ethnic. Mind you, it’s not lost in translation- the word slave, we know what it is. They might as well call them N***** earrings. For somebody like Franca Sozzani, who did that whole black issue for Vogue, somebody should have said something.”
I myself still puzzled with this mis-translation. I looked up
the two words ethnic and slave in Italian and it translates to etnico and
schavia. These words are not even close to each other. So where did the
mis-translation occur?
