In December 1977 , President Jimmy Carter planned a misstep to Poland , a commonwealth whose masses were , at the time , still fiercely huddled behind the Iron Curtain .
What Should Have happen : Your average , drilling - yet - passively - uncongenial Cold War - epoch visit . Carter would fell in , say a few carefully choose words implying that perhaps Poland should pay more attention to human right , which the Poles would then slyly dismiss . Then everybody would go have a big dinner party and a few shots of vodka before hitting their heavily bugged hotel room . No big deal .
What Happened Instead : A diplomatical snafu famous for being simultaneously politically violative and hilarious .
The problem stemmed from Carter ’s Polish translator , Steven Seymour , a freelance linguistic scientist who was engage by the State Department for $ 150 a day . Although an accomplished and well-thought-of transcriber of written Polish , Seymour turn out to be less - than - apt with the spoken word . During his speech , Carter say he ’d come to find out about the Polish people ’s desires for the future — imply their political and economic desires .
During the translation, however, Seymour used a word that suggested the president was instead interested in the Poles' carnal lusts.
And for a second bout of humiliation , when Carter later mentioned leaving for his journey back to the United States , Seymour translated it to mean Carter had abandoned America forever . Having thoroughly bedevil the Poles ( and creeping them out in the operation ) , Seymour further sullied his version with Russian words — a large no - no in a country with a long story of anti - Russian cultural enmity . Not surprisingly , he was soon replaced .
