An Analysis of an Interview in English with Șerban Nicolae

Șerban Nicolae, one of the leaders of the majority party, after the "main" leader went to jail, just announced his candidature to Romanian presidency at the next elections in November or December.

Starting with the title of the interview. "Using secret protocols is deep illegal". Should have been adverb not adjective. Deeply illegal (adjective, illegal requires an adverb as modifier).

The English spoken by the guy on the left (Euronews) is weird. It starts from the beginning. "When i came here, from the airport, right now". Past tense verb, narrative tense, right now, present. Bullying gestures, bad English, it makes it very hard to answer. Gives a bad English example to non-native speakers, right from the start. Too distracting, throws your mind off the subject immediately.

Actually the reason i started this was because i could not make sense of what they were talking about.

And continues. "I asked the taxi driver: Romania changed its government 3 times in one year".

That is not a question. Should have been. I told the taxi driver. Nevermind the phrase is followed by another one, a question.

1:40 "Why you had the third change of government since one year?"

Romania did have indeed 3 govern changes within one year but they were not "deep" changes. The most important ministers where rotated while some of the non-important where changed together with the names of the prime ministers.

1:49. "One erection?"

2:20. Unintelligible. Inner? procedure?

Got it. Penal procedure. There is no penal procedure in English speaking countries.

2:27 "Why putting pressure on judges? Why intimidating them?

What?

2:56 "Why should [we] not have personal liability for judges?"

Because of separation of powers in state? Who would judge a judge "held" for personal liability? Would judges start to judge among selves? Would they start to buy insurance for liability, like doctors? There are countries where they've been serious judicial errors, like people being imprisoned for life or even executed and then exonerated but i never heard of a judge being "held liable" for a judgement.

It is true that in the US any person who's being accused of a serious crime can request a juror trial where half of the jurors are being picked by the prosecutor and half by the defendant's lawyer. Most serious cases are not judged by judges.

3:03. "The liability of a judge or a prosecutor can be... arrange... only when there's been a judicial error that leads to payment of the state..."

English. Cannot "arrange" a liability. "could occur" or "can happen" would have been much better. Should have been past tense "arranged".

Again never heard of something like that.

4:04 "This kind of interpretation that the individual liability can be interpreted as a form of intimidation is not correct. All the public servants are under this kind of intimidation".

English. Can an interpretation can be interpreted?

English. Contradiction in the same phrase. Interpretation is not correct, all the public servants are under this kind of intimidation.

English: should be "All the public servants are subjected to intimidation". Is there more than one kind of intimidation?

Juridical and reality. Nobody likes to work while intimidated. Could be sarcastic or metaphoric in which case the phrase makes sense.

He is making a big mistake here like most people who lived in communist countries where the law was used as an instrument of repression. Nobody should fear the law unless if they committed or commit crimes.

4:19 "The intimidation of the law. They have to obey the law".

Again (emphasis on the same mistake)

4:30 "I break the law, i will pay" (about judges).

4:33 "Is the independence of justice under threat here in Romania?"

What? Like it existed?

4:38 No, you see the main fear came [comes] from [a] different point of view.

Never heard of a fear coming from a point of view.

...will continue...