This morning, the Guardian reprinted "the full text of the statement claiming responsibility [for the bombings in London] from the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaida of Jihad Organisation in Europe".
Their version of this statement reads:
In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him.
Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.
We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.
We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.
God says: "You who believe: If ye will aid [the cause of] Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly."
The Guardian fails to note that this is a translation from the Arabic. And the curiously redundant name attributed to the organization claiming responsiblity -- "the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaida of Jihad Organisation in Europe" -- is only one of many variant translations of what must be a single web occurrence of a single Arabic phrase. Elsewhere in the news this morning, we can find references to the name of this same organization, in stories citing its claim of responsibility for the London bombings, rendered as:
Al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe
Al-Qaida Jihad Europe
Group of al-Qaida of Jihad Organization in Europe
Organisation for al-Qaeda Jihad Secret Organisation in Europe
Organisation of al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe
Secret Al Qaeda Jihad Organization in Europe
Secret Cell of al Qaeda of Jihad Group in Europe
Secret Group of Al Qaeda Jihad in Europe
Secret Group of al Qaeda - Jihad in Europe
Secret Group of al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe
Secret Group of al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe
Secret Organisation -- al-Qaida in Europe
Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaida of Jihad Organisation in Europe
Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaida of Jihad in Europe
Secret Organisation of Al Qaeda in Europe
Secret Organisation of al-Qaeda in Europe
Secret Organisation of the al-Qaida Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization -- Al Qaeda Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization Al Qaeda in Europe
Secret Organization Group of al Qaeda of Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization Group of al-Qaida Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization of Al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization of Qaedat al-Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization of al-Qaida and Jihad in Europe
Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe
a "secret group" of Qaida al-Jihad in Europe
al-Qa'eda's Secret Organisation Group of Jihad Organisation in Europe
al-Qaeda Organization in Europe
al-Qaeda of Jihad in Europeand many others.
The Age reprints a BBC story that gives more detail, specifically that "'Nur al-Iman' participant, identified as a 'new guest', posts to the jihadist website Al-Qal'ah (Fortress), a statement issued by 'The Secret Organization Group of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in Europe'", and offers this "translated text of the statement" which includes a transliteration of the Arabic version of the name of the group claiming responsibility:
The Secret Organization Group of Al-Qa'idah of Jihad Organization in Europe (Jama'at al-Tanzim al-Sirri, Tanzim Qa'idat al-Jihad fi Urupa) In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and the dauntless fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him.
O nation of Islam and nation of Arabism: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge from the British Zionist Crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The heroic mujahidin have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern and western quarters.
We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahidin exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.
We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the Crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.
God says: " (O ye who believe!) If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly."
I think this is recognizably a less edited version of the same translation used by the Guardian, and contains essentially the same English version of the organization's name, which also seems to be roughly as redundant in Arabic as in the English translation. But where did all the other versions of the name in the news come from? Were they independent translations from the Arabic? Perhaps in some cases. But I suspect that copy editors (and journalists themselves) have also been busy improving the terrorists' nomenclature.
In this case, the many variant English versions of this group's name have all arisen in the course of less than a day from a single brief Arabic-language text source. It's a good example of the natural proliferation of terms of reference, even when it's entirely clear that there is a single referent, and people are trying to refer to it by name rather than by description.
The ontological puritans of the Semantic Web movement, confronted with this evidence of human nature, will be muttering "you see -- I told you so..." Those interested in practical techniques for analysis of natural language will find in this case an especially pure and concentrated example of the problem of tracking entity references across documents and languages.
[Update #2: according to this 2002 article in the Guardian, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (the first of which was first published in 1951) may have been published in Arabic under the title Al-Qa'ida, and may have inspired Osama bin Laden to think of himself as Hari Seldon. At least, this is the claim of a Russian named Dmitri Gusev. However, scholarly searches have failed to find any evidence that an Arabic translation of Asimov's works ever existed.]
Posted by Mark Liberman at July 8, 2005 08:01 AM