Expletive falsely attributed to Dalai Lama

Photo provided by Brown University, shows Dalai Lama addressing audience Wednesday / AP Photo/Brown University, Mike Cohea

PROVIDENCE, R.I. The Dalai Lama didn't curse at a Brown University event, the college swears -- even if the closed captioning said differently.

A closing comment Wednesday by the Dalai Lama was mistaken for a profanity by the person transcribing his remarks for closed captioning at a speech on peace.

The exiled Tibetan leader urged listeners to share his thoughts with others if they found them interesting. If not, he said, they could "forget."

The closed captioning on a large screen at the Rhode Island Convention Center transcribed the remark as an expletive.

Some in the audience also believed the Dalai Lama, who has a strong accent, had used a profane phrase. Questions have arisen previously over the same comment in other venues.

A Brown spokeswoman confirmed the Dalai Lama said "forget" and said the closed captioning that appeared was an error.

[megssherman]

I feel as if you were listening to his speech carefully enough, you would realize that in the context of his sentence that specific slur wouldn't make sense. Also, I think we all should have taken his thick accent into consideration before we went and accused him of this. Even if he did swear, why are we making such a big deal of it? We all do it.