WestLondoner
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100% IMHO.Personally I think there is little value in trying to parse HCWs every word. Both because in other cases, statements have tended to be quite misleading about what they evidence, and I also doubt HCW is trying to give us clues.
And you are also correct about the language thing. We've seen before that some of the translations in the UK media are not particularly accurate, or where HCW speaks english, then we have to be careful.
Do you have the link to what he says in the SF interview? Did he say that in english or in german?
For instance "Ich will das nicht sagen" could have different Interpretations depending on context
Ich will das nicht sagen literally means "I don't want to say that", but depending on the context, a better translation of the intended sense might be "I wouldn't put it like that" or "I wouldn't say that, exactly". It's just how the language goes together, and if you translate directly, you sometimes convey a nuance that's not there.
My favourite example of this is the adjective sogenannt, which literally means "so-called" (so = "so"; genannt = past participle of nennen, "to name", hence "named"; which put together make one word sogenannt = "thus-named" or "so-called"). In German you frequently come across this word - in sentences like die sogenannte 'Romantische Strasse' läuft zwischen Würzburg und Füssen, which is typically then directly translated as "The so-called Romantic Road runs between Würzburg and Füssen'.
The word "so-called" in English has overtones of scepticism, doubt, or derision ("this is my so-called car"), however, that are completely absent from the German word. Sogennant really just has the sense of "often known as", or "sometimes referred to as".
So yes, I wouldn't hang too much off micronuances in what people say in this instance.