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I'm sure hardly anyone in Iran actually believes they are going to be able to literally destroy America (except in the sense that God will eventually do that for them, which no doubt a few true believers do sincerely believe). That they don't literally mean "We will kill 300 million Americans bwahahaha!" does not mean their sentiment is not very real, and sincerely intended against whatever Americans or American proxies they can get their hands on.
Likewise, we are not going to "destroy Iran." We might destroy their government. We are not going to nuke their cities and raze their crops and exterminate civilians wholesale (which their government would certainly do to us if they had the capability).
Reality check: Iranians say مرگ بر آمریک. The literal translation is "Death to America." The Arabic الموت لأمريكا likewise translates literally as "Death to America." There is no "translation issue" and while yes, it might have some more general "You suck!" meaning in the minds of some of the chanters who arguably don't literally want every last American dead, it's still pretty unambiguous in its meaning. There is no idomatic usage in either Persian or Arabic where you say "Death to you" and aren't literally (if not sincerely) wishing death upon you.
There have been cases of the chant being used about potatoes and traffic. After 9/11, when Khamenei condemned the terror attacks, large crowds of Iranians held vigils, and some chanted “death to terrorism”. This is not the behavior of a nation that actually wants death inflicted upon a country.
Well, by the same token, Netanyahu calls Iran “Amalek”, which in the traditional telling, must be fully destroyed along with “all that they have […] both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey”. Do Israelis take this commandment literally? No; every Israeli cleric will explain that Amalek is a symbolic representation of evil. But if you’re Iran, you know what they’ve done to Gaza, and Iraq, and Syria, and Libya… so even a symbolic transliteration is not reassuring.
I'm sure Iranians (and everyone else) have said "Death to Pikachu" or "Death to my mother-in-law" at some point.
This argument is disingenuous and seems a lot like the whole "River to the Sea" debate, where whether it's actually an expression of violent intent depends on whether you hate Jews or not. As I already pointed out, not every single person who chants "Death to " literally wants to see an entire country exterminated, but you are well aware that Iranians chanting "Death to " in the streets mean what they say, even if they think it's figurative because they aren't actually in a position to inflict death.
Netanyahu's "Amalek" reference is in fact pretty loaded and I'm sure he knew what he was saying (and that he could waffle on whether he really has genocidal intent). That said, a politician using loaded rhetoric isn't the same as thousands of people chanting something in unison. If thousands of Israelis start chanting "Iran is Amalek," yes, I would assume that the general sentiment is that they would like to see Iran literally wiped off the map and that a not-insignificant fraction of them really and truly want and expect to do that. There are no doubt a non-zero number of Israelis who really mean it literally, and if I were Iranian, I probably would not be very charitable about interpreting an Israeli's use of that word.
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I was unaware that Israel was a big player in the NATO intervention there.
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Without taking a stance on what the Iranians actually mean when they say Death to America, I was just thinking a few days back how there exists an American relative equivalent in phrases that demonstrate ambiguity of rhetoric and the need to take cultural context into account in translation: the constant calls for "revolution" and uses of the word "revolution" as a description in politics (Ron Paul Revolution! The Reagan Revolution! Bernie's "Our Revolution!") with "revolution" basically just meaning electing a candidate within the existing system instead of its general historical meaning of a complete societal upheaval from the bottom to the top, often/usually through the force of arms (or at least an implication of the same).
You don't see the word "revolution" used the same way in Finland, for example, a country with negative experience of actual attempts at revolution (the left used the word when it was communist but basically doesn't any more, the right has approximately never used it in any sort of a positive sense).
Out of curiosity, I asked Google to translate "Industrial Revolution" from English to Finnish and got this: "teollinen vallankumous" Then I asked for just the word "revolution" and got this: "vallankumous" So I think that if there were Americans calling for a "MAGA-style revolution in Finland," I think it would be correctly understood.
Perhaps a better example is the word "kill" which, in English, has both a literal and a figurative meaning. (e.g. "last week the Yankees got KILLED by the Red Sox") Ok, so let's suppose that Benjamin Netanyahu announced - in English -- that Israel is going to KILL the Iranians. Under such circumstances, it would be reasonable to take this as evidence of genocidal intent. Even if Israel's defenders argued that the word "kill" doesn't necessarily mean to literally "kill." That what Netanyahu actually meant was that they would defeat Iran.
In fact, if Netanyahu actually were to say something like this, he surely would have known in advance how it would be interpreted. So if he did say it, it's pretty likely that he would have wanted -- to some extent -- for people to interpret it this way.
So too with "Death to America"
Yeah, should probably specify that I was talking about strictly the use of the word "revolution" in politics, it is used in social trends like "industrial revolution", "sexual revolution" and so on. But yeah, "kill" in this sense is probably a better example, and there's a lot of other violent-style rhetoric like that - "crush X", "kick X's ass" and so on.
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Reality check: That's not how translation works.
Counter-reality check: I speak Arabic (poorly) and listen to what they actually say and mean.
The Russian translator from the linked example could speak English and listen to what English speakers say and mean.
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For what it's worth, I recall reading an article once that described a taxicab driver on a congested road somewhere in Iran shouting "Death to this traffic!".
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Also, the argument is weakened significantly because the phrase has a subject. If I say that sucks, sure it's fine. If I say "you suck", that's a little worse but not bad. But if I said "Dave sucks Bob off" then... yeah, it's the original meaning. If I say "damn", that's whatever. If I say "damn you" that's worse and more vitriolic. If I say "damn you to hell" then, yeah, that's like the original meaning again. As far as I can tell, this is a pretty universal rule.
I'm willing to buy that it's softer than US media presents it as, but it's total bullshit that it's lost all connotation. It's still quite hostile. Just like "fuck all republicans" is like, never going to be clean and always going to be something full of animus even if people drop a "fuck" all over the place in regular conversations.
"Peg the Patriarchy" may not be calling for the specific sex act, but the sentiment is correctly understood to be very negative all the same.
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