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In this video you can see the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker in a speech on EU Parliament in Brussels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM-KVAXY7Gs

At 0:08 his translated words are:

I saw and heard and listened some of the other planet leaders.

My questions are: - Is the translation accurate? - Is the real audio? - Is he really Juncker?

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Juncker said,

J'ai vu et entendu et écouté plusieurs des dirigeants d'autres planètes

which translates to:

I saw and heard and listened to several of the leaders of other planets

so, yes, the translation is accurate.

As has been pointed out, Juncker is not a native French speaker - per Wikipedia, he is a native Luxemburgish speaker. I would also add that his position is a very demanding one and probably requires him to interact with other people in several languages on a daily basis, so you could expect a slip of the tongue from time to time.

Also, some British newspapers have claimed that he is an alcoholic (see here for one example) which might not help with concentration, at least in the long run.

Now, the video itself very much looks like others of him posted on the European Parliament's website (link), so it's probably him!

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Yes he made a quite funny mistake, literally saying that he had spoken with "leaders from/on other planets"! The comical effect is reinforced when he talks (twice) about people who are "far away". Quite far away indeed, if they are on other planets... But it is just a simple mistake because he is probably not a native French speaker. He just meant "other leaders anywhere on this planet", obviously :-)

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    He is a native Luxembourgish speaker, but definitely fluent in French. It might be an inattention mistake, "d'autres dirigeants sur la planète" turned into "de dirigeants d'autres planètes".
    – jlliagre
    Feb 2, 2017 at 2:42
  • Yes, his French is excellent, aside from this mistake :-)
    – Frank
    Feb 2, 2017 at 2:43
  • Another theory in the timeless game of Thesaurus Calculus, in which you try to work backwards to determine the word a person had in mind: "d'autres mondes" might have been okay figuratively, and an accidental "planète" for "monde" is not too far a stretch even though "planète" doesn't have that figurative meaning ... or even "d'autres sphères" :)
    – Luke Sawczak ♦
    Feb 2, 2017 at 2:53
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    I guess he wanted to say notre but ended up saying d'autres
    – DRz
    Feb 3, 2017 at 23:00

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