Arabic translation of Danish commando book appears online

Denmark was shrouded in controversy last week, following reports of a controversial book on Danish commandos and its translation into Arabic. It is believed that the Danish military unsuccessfully sought an injunction against the translation, according to the news source Politiken.

The translation was later revealed to be a simple, automatic on-line deciphering of the text rendering the book largely unreadable. The tabloid B.T showed the translation on its website which sparked further controversy as it suggested that the defence forces themselves were responsible for the materials collated.

Laila Larsen, a word processing expert, then went on national television to demonstrate how to determine the sources of information within the document by the use of a simple right click. “When I right click on the document and look in document information, I can see the title and author of the document, and I can see that it has been created by Defence Command Denmark,” said Larsen.

The Deputy Head of the Defence Command Denmark Communication Secretariat, John M. Nielsen told news reporters that the military was aware of the translation. ”We heard that there was an Arabic version of ’Commando – at war with the elite’ on the Internet, so we asked our IT department to find it, which they did and transferred it into a Word document,” Mr. Nielsen stated. He was adamant that there was no desire on the part of the military to distribute the book and was at a loss to explain how the translation managed to appear online.