The Surprising Articulacy of Wayne Rooney

I wish I knew how to quit you.

This from the Independent is a very interesting story. Not only for the ongoing tempestuous bromance between Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney (and their egos), but because of something rather interesting about the way Wayne Rooney seems to be talking.

The quotes in this story are taken from an interview Rooney did with an Italian newspaper. And, as the Independent report notes, he seems to be rather more expressive for the Italian market:

Interviewer: 'How do you score a goal like the bicycle kick?'
Rooney: 'You stop thinking with your head and start thinking with your gut. Just like when you bring a child into the world.'

Adorable. I've read quite a few interviews with Rooney and this is the first time he has displayed a whimsical desire to meditate upon the emotional parallels between fatherhood and the footy. Some might, indeed, describe this as almost Italian phrasing.

And of course it is so. Whoever transcribed the interview - unless Rooney really did express himself with hitherto unglimpsed eurosuavity - polished it up a bit. I get the exasperation which must afflict all football writers (who have the phrases 'at the end of the day', 'good team performance all round' and 'take nothing away from the lads' bound to single key-strokes), and I understand why you'd want to pep up your copy a bit.

Of course, this is a serious ethical failure, as the once-mighty Johan Hari discovered last year. Your responsibility, when reporting someone's words, is to report the words, and explain them elsewhere; not edit them so they become punchier, pithier or more meaningful.

What has this to do with me and Bangladesh and development work?

I write reports. I travel a sod of a long way to get them, on death-trap buses and terrifying roads. I sit with people, careful to conduct myself in a way that jars them as little as possible, and allows me to serve them by telling their story. A few days ago I got back from a trip which involved 3 days of travel for a total of 60 minutes interviewing.

I understand very well the temptation to, shall we say, finesse the words used in an original language by someone whose opinion you really, really want to hear. The temptation comes, simply, from the fact that you really, really want people to hear it too.

Maybe the phrasing isn't very smooth. Maybe it uses an idiom that doesn't translate. Maybe it's just tantalisingly close to being the killer quote that sums up your entire success, but for a word or two.

And, after all, you've travelled a long way to get here. Petulance (and preposterousness) kick in. How dare they fail to reward your effort with a perfect soundbite? Don't they understand what Twitter is?

But no, they're talking in frustratingly vague terms. Again. You know what they mean. Since you're not using their actual words anyway, what's the harm in smoothing the passage of their meaning past the spiky rocks of Babel?

At which point I have to have a stern word with myself, and not only for being so childish.

Truth isn't optional. Tell the truth; we have enough myths as it is. It might offend your aesthetic sense, but for heaven's sake, there are ways of giving context without completely surrendering the rhythm of a piece. And if you can't see them, sweat until you've learned them.

[Photo from The Independent/Getty Images]