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Comment by chewz | Hacker News Reader

My ex-wife Grandmother had spent over 10 years (1964-1975) in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a reporter on the Vietnamese side during the Vietnam War and consecutive conflicts (Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia 1978).

She was the first European to walk all length of Ho Chi Minh trail, lived in Saigon undercover during American occupation and wrote couple of books about the Vietnam Wars.

She was telling a lot of stories and I remember some people from US visiting her in 90s hoping to use her contacts in order to find some lost American POWs.

Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monika_Warne%C5%84ska

https://www.amazon.com/PFADE-DURCH-DEN-DSCHUNGEL-Vietnam-Rep...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_trail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_W...

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> I remember some people from US visiting her in 90s hoping to use her contacts in order to find some lost American POWs.

Ah yes, yet another crazy Republican idea I had forgotten about, that there are still POWs being kept in secret camps in Vietnam.

Vietnam has opened their entire country to Americans to inspect, including Republican politicos, and yet America still tells this evil lie.

Fascinating! It looks like her books have Russian translations; will be very interested to give them a read.

> Unfortunately her books had been not translated into English.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity. Has anyone considered crowd sourcing a translation? I'd chuck in 10 bucks to read it and there's certainly a lot of history buffs out there looking for a fresh perspective.

Mind that Monika was reporting for largest communist daily in Poland - her books are good reporting, lots of focus on people involved in the war but there is also a propaganda narrative.

On the other hand her reporting angle is much better then some Western "useful idots"[1] like Tiziano Terzani [0] (der Spiegel), who had been calling Pol-pot 'great man with a vision for a nation' even on his deathbed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiziano_Terzani

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/xmlui/handle/item/231066

That's something that I think can be put into context with a short preface. I think propaganda is some of the most interesting parts of history.

On the other hand, this kind of prefaces often have the danger of sounding condescending or even disrespectful to the reader (and to the author). A safer bet that I've seen sometimes is to give two prefaces, exposing complementary or even contradictory views. This lets the reader approach the book without holding hands.

Sure, it used to be. I'm sad beautiful propaganda is gone and all the propaganda is about stupid internet trolling nowadays.

>> ... Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia

>> ... American occupation [of Saigon]

> but there is also a propaganda narrative.

Yes you can see it explicitly from how he describes the two sentences above, one as an "intervention" and the other as an "occupation". I don't think most Cambodians considered the Vietnamese invasion in late '70's as an intervention, nor did the majority of the rest of the non-Soviet aligned world.

You're quoting the same person you're replying to.

That sounds like a very good startup idea. Crowdsourcing for translations, with each chapter being a stretch goal.

Of course you would need to navigate international copyright law, but I could definitely see a market for this

>> reporter on the Vietnamese side

Which Vietnamese side?

The one not artificially kept alive by a foreign power through a puppet regime.

I think you will still need to be more specific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War

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