3 books in translation that ask a lot — and allow the reader to ask a lot in return - Valley Public Radio - Translation

Subtlety gets a lot of praise in the realm of literature.

Many readers, critics, and editors see delicacy, especially on the thematic front, as a sign of quality and challenge, which it frequently is. But gentle, subtle novels are far more common than ones that take the opposite tactic, announcing their difficulty or their defiance from the very first page — a brave strategy, and one that creates a uniquely exciting relationship between author and audience. When a book declares itself a challenge right away, its readers get to make the conscious choice to rise to the occasion. Doing so generates a sense of investment; it also heightens our expectations. If an author asks a lot of us, we get to ask a lot of that author, too.

None of the novels below pretend for a moment to be easy. Kim Hye-jin's Concerning My Daughter, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, demands a taxing quantity of empathy from its readers and protagonist alike; the Brazilian literary master João Gilberto Noll's erotic odyssey Hugs and Cuddles, translated from by Edgar Garbelotto, shatters any prudery or sexual squeamishness readers may bring to the book; and the Cuban writer Jorge Enrique Lage's cyberpunk Freeway: La Movie, translated by Lourdes Molina, is so disorienting that it stretches our ideas of narrative. All three books are tough — and all three are completely consuming. They demand our full attention, and then they earn it.

Concerning My Daughter

Concerning My Daughter is a tiny, blunt book. Its twin subjects are homophobia and class disadvantage, which Kim Hye-jin links on nearly every page. Kim's nameless narrator, a middle-aged widow barely supporting herself by temping in awful conditions as a nursing-home aide, cannot bear that her adult daughter, Green, is gay; indeed, just hearing her daughter say the word lesbian makes her feel like a "cornered animal." Often, the narrator's prejudice — which, Kim is quite clear, is informed both by a desire for her daughter not to be discriminated against and by real revulsion at the idea of lesbian sex — is nearly unbearable to read. Yet Kim is equally clear that Green's mother, repellent as she can be, deserves empathy. Her financial straits have driven her into a constricting survival mode: she avoids intimacy and friendship, is terrified to stand up for herself or her patients at work, and allows Green and her girlfriend Lane to move in with her rather than sell a house she can't afford, but sees as the "only thing over which I can claim control and exercise ownership."

Concerning My Daughter is often didactic, privileging message over plot. Kim lets both Green and Lane deliver monologues about their right to acceptance; she also lets the narrator monologue, if only to the reader, about the precarity of her life. None of these passages are lectures, though: Kim gives them such emotional heft that they can only be pleas. Jamie Chang's translation, which is plain yet highly precise, amplifies this effect. She leaves no ambiguity in the text, which means the reader cannot hide from the intensity of the narrator's feelings. Ultimately, Concerning My Daughter turns into a confrontation — not just between Green and her mother, but also between Green's mother and the reader. Understanding, in this book, has to come from all sides.

Hugs and Cuddles

If you were to casually leaf through João Gilberto Noll's Hugs and Cuddles, not knowing much about Noll's work, you'd assume it was erotica. (And it could be!) Noll, a highly influential Brazilian postmodernist who died in 2017, wrote frequently about queerness, defiance, and the freedom that can come from life outside mainstream society's confines. It's a theme that's quite literal in Hugs and Cuddles, which gets moving after the middle-aged narrator's great unrequited love, known as "my engineer friend," invites him to a gay orgy on a decommissioned Nazi submarine. Underwater, the narrator is shy, but after disembarking, he enters his own personal "orgiastic age," which includes bathroom-stall sex, sex with a goat, and some surprising sex with his wife. Still, he yearns for a "love affair between two mature men." When this affair finally manifests, the narrator does something that, by Noll's standards, is shocking: He moves to the jungle with the engineer, now his partner, and tries to transform himself psychologically into "the wife [the engineer] had always dreamed of." (Although, granted, he remains a "horny stud" by night.)

Hugs and Cuddles laughs at gender, but takes sex seriously. It is both prurient and philosophical, gleefully dirty and wrenchingly serious. (Except its plot, which is consciously absurd.) Edgar Garbelotto, Noll's translator, does the novel a bit of a disservice by opting not to adapt its prose to the rhythms of the English language, a decision that sometimes stalls its momentum, but Noll's portrait of a man ruled by desire is too interesting to look away from. Hugs and Cuddles intertwines its narrator's longings for sex, submission, novelty, and comfort so seamlessly that, after reading it, you may well wonder if those desires are separable at all.

Freeway: La Movie

In some ways, Jorge Enrique Lage's satirical Freeway: La Movie is perfectly recognizable. It's a picaresque buddy comedy, one of the oldest literary forms: its narrator (who, like Noll and Kim's narrators, is nameless) and his sidekick, El Autista, roam a dystopian Cuba, just like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza roamed 16th-century Spain. But while Miguel de Cervantes grounds readers in Don Quixote's setting, Lage disorients us totally. Starting Freeway: La Movie is confusing in the way the first scenes of action films often are. Events come quickly, with context lagging so behind that readers simply cannot interpret what's happening. Each chapter is a separate, surreal adventure, linked only by narrator and setting: a construction site that turns into a gigantic highway linking Cuba to the United States.

Lage delights in mockery, and Freeway: La Movie is best when he's funniest.

Sometimes his humor is absurdist, as in a chapter in which the protagonist encounters a genie who not only lives in a Coke bottle, but was once Coca-Cola's brilliant, misunderstood chief scientist. (His name, which translator Lourdes Molina smartly leaves in Spanish, is El Genio, which means both genius and genie.) But more often, Lage's jokes are political and pitch-black. His willingness to laugh at serious matters — genocide against indigenous tribes; the prison at Guantánamo Bay; highway builders' tendency to destroy poor neighborhoods — gives Freeway: La Movie an angry energy that will carry willing readers past their disorientation. Of course, Lage also mocks his readers, if only by defying our idea that narratives should make sense. Freeway: La Movie has no real storyline, just a nameless, displaced narrator who's just trying to act as "the only witness to whatever is happening." At some point, aren't we all?

Lily Meyer is a writer, translator, and critic. Her first novel, Short War, is forthcoming from A Strange Object in 2024.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Adblock test (Why?)

BTS's RM confirmed to be the MC of tvN's 'The Mysterious Dictionary of Useless Miscellaneous Human Knowledge' - allkpop - Dictionary

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

BTS's RM confirmed to be the MC of tvN's 'The Mysterious Dictionary of Useless Miscellaneous Human Knowledge'  allkpop

3 books in translation that ask a lot — and allow the reader to ask a lot in return - KSFR - Translation

Subtlety gets a lot of praise in the realm of literature.

Many readers, critics, and editors see delicacy, especially on the thematic front, as a sign of quality and challenge, which it frequently is. But gentle, subtle novels are far more common than ones that take the opposite tactic, announcing their difficulty or their defiance from the very first page — a brave strategy, and one that creates a uniquely exciting relationship between author and audience. When a book declares itself a challenge right away, its readers get to make the conscious choice to rise to the occasion. Doing so generates a sense of investment; it also heightens our expectations. If an author asks a lot of us, we get to ask a lot of that author, too.

None of the novels below pretend for a moment to be easy. Kim Hye-jin's Concerning My Daughter, translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang, demands a taxing quantity of empathy from its readers and protagonist alike; the Brazilian literary master João Gilberto Noll's erotic odyssey Hugs and Cuddles, translated from by Edgar Garbelotto, shatters any prudery or sexual squeamishness readers may bring to the book; and the Cuban writer Jorge Enrique Lage's cyberpunk Freeway: La Movie, translated by Lourdes Molina, is so disorienting that it stretches our ideas of narrative. All three books are tough — and all three are completely consuming. They demand our full attention, and then they earn it.

Concerning My Daughter

Concerning My Daughter is a tiny, blunt book. Its twin subjects are homophobia and class disadvantage, which Kim Hye-jin links on nearly every page. Kim's nameless narrator, a middle-aged widow barely supporting herself by temping in awful conditions as a nursing-home aide, cannot bear that her adult daughter, Green, is gay; indeed, just hearing her daughter say the word lesbian makes her feel like a "cornered animal." Often, the narrator's prejudice — which, Kim is quite clear, is informed both by a desire for her daughter not to be discriminated against and by real revulsion at the idea of lesbian sex — is nearly unbearable to read. Yet Kim is equally clear that Green's mother, repellent as she can be, deserves empathy. Her financial straits have driven her into a constricting survival mode: she avoids intimacy and friendship, is terrified to stand up for herself or her patients at work, and allows Green and her girlfriend Lane to move in with her rather than sell a house she can't afford, but sees as the "only thing over which I can claim control and exercise ownership."

Concerning My Daughter is often didactic, privileging message over plot. Kim lets both Green and Lane deliver monologues about their right to acceptance; she also lets the narrator monologue, if only to the reader, about the precarity of her life. None of these passages are lectures, though: Kim gives them such emotional heft that they can only be pleas. Jamie Chang's translation, which is plain yet highly precise, amplifies this effect. She leaves no ambiguity in the text, which means the reader cannot hide from the intensity of the narrator's feelings. Ultimately, Concerning My Daughter turns into a confrontation — not just between Green and her mother, but also between Green's mother and the reader. Understanding, in this book, has to come from all sides.

Hugs and Cuddles

If you were to casually leaf through João Gilberto Noll's Hugs and Cuddles, not knowing much about Noll's work, you'd assume it was erotica. (And it could be!) Noll, a highly influential Brazilian postmodernist who died in 2017, wrote frequently about queerness, defiance, and the freedom that can come from life outside mainstream society's confines. It's a theme that's quite literal in Hugs and Cuddles, which gets moving after the middle-aged narrator's great unrequited love, known as "my engineer friend," invites him to a gay orgy on a decommissioned Nazi submarine. Underwater, the narrator is shy, but after disembarking, he enters his own personal "orgiastic age," which includes bathroom-stall sex, sex with a goat, and some surprising sex with his wife. Still, he yearns for a "love affair between two mature men." When this affair finally manifests, the narrator does something that, by Noll's standards, is shocking: He moves to the jungle with the engineer, now his partner, and tries to transform himself psychologically into "the wife [the engineer] had always dreamed of." (Although, granted, he remains a "horny stud" by night.)

Hugs and Cuddles laughs at gender, but takes sex seriously. It is both prurient and philosophical, gleefully dirty and wrenchingly serious. (Except its plot, which is consciously absurd.) Edgar Garbelotto, Noll's translator, does the novel a bit of a disservice by opting not to adapt its prose to the rhythms of the English language, a decision that sometimes stalls its momentum, but Noll's portrait of a man ruled by desire is too interesting to look away from. Hugs and Cuddles intertwines its narrator's longings for sex, submission, novelty, and comfort so seamlessly that, after reading it, you may well wonder if those desires are separable at all.

Freeway: La Movie

In some ways, Jorge Enrique Lage's satirical Freeway: La Movie is perfectly recognizable. It's a picaresque buddy comedy, one of the oldest literary forms: its narrator (who, like Noll and Kim's narrators, is nameless) and his sidekick, El Autista, roam a dystopian Cuba, just like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza roamed 16th-century Spain. But while Miguel de Cervantes grounds readers in Don Quixote's setting, Lage disorients us totally. Starting Freeway: La Movie is confusing in the way the first scenes of action films often are. Events come quickly, with context lagging so behind that readers simply cannot interpret what's happening. Each chapter is a separate, surreal adventure, linked only by narrator and setting: a construction site that turns into a gigantic highway linking Cuba to the United States.

Lage delights in mockery, and Freeway: La Movie is best when he's funniest.

Sometimes his humor is absurdist, as in a chapter in which the protagonist encounters a genie who not only lives in a Coke bottle, but was once Coca-Cola's brilliant, misunderstood chief scientist. (His name, which translator Lourdes Molina smartly leaves in Spanish, is El Genio, which means both genius and genie.) But more often, Lage's jokes are political and pitch-black. His willingness to laugh at serious matters — genocide against indigenous tribes; the prison at Guantánamo Bay; highway builders' tendency to destroy poor neighborhoods — gives Freeway: La Movie an angry energy that will carry willing readers past their disorientation. Of course, Lage also mocks his readers, if only by defying our idea that narratives should make sense. Freeway: La Movie has no real storyline, just a nameless, displaced narrator who's just trying to act as "the only witness to whatever is happening." At some point, aren't we all?

Lily Meyer is a writer and translator living in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Adblock test (Why?)

Scratching my bald head (part 6): Comms pros – consult the dictionary of life - PR Week - Dictionary

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

Scratching my bald head (part 6): Comms pros – consult the dictionary of life  PR Week

The Intimate Art of Translation - The Imaginative Conservative - Translation

It is an intimate art, the translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal.

On January 11, 1940, the Italian writer and translator Cesare Pavese wrote in his diary: “Periods of great productivity in literature are preceded by a generation of intensely active translators. The closer history approaches our own era, the more the fusion of civilizations takes place, not by flesh and blood, but on paper. Instead of invasions, we have translations.”

It’s odd to read that “instead of invasions” line when World War II was already raging when he wrote, even if all the countries that would eventually take part had not yet joined it. But I think it plain to see what he means: The fusion of civilizations that takes place in invasions often ends up being more defined by death—a heap of corpses intermingled—than a marriage with the resulting life. Even if the invaders don’t blow up all the buildings or burn the art, they quite often handle them roughly, not knowing what to do with the treasures of a civilization. And due to the situation, those being invaded are quite often unable to share what they have (even assuming they would want to share it with the present enemy) because all the attention is dedicated to the question of survival.

Not so with translations. Today they are, I suppose, labeled by the woke as acts of “cultural appropriation” or “colonization” or some such other nonsense, which can only be said if one considers the rather squishy groupings of humans according to race more important than the one grouping that follows both the science and the theology: the human race. But for those of us who subscribe to the latter term—by which I mean all sane people—translation is a fusion that reminds us of marriage.

Like marriage, translation brings together two distinct and different but similar things united by their humanity. And while some translations, like some marriages, are marked by faithfulness and beauty, some are unfaithful and ugly. Still others can be marked by an ugly faithfulness and others by a beauty tinged by infidelity. The old Italian saying traduttore, traditore means that the translator, perhaps every translator, is a traitor in some way. But the possibility of betrayal only exists because of that marriage-like intimacy of the act.

I wish I had come up with that last thought myself, but alas I appropriated it from Michial Farmer, a teacher and writer who translated a play written by the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel. He was one of four participants on a panel dealing with the art of translation at the fourth Catholic Imagination Conference, which was held at the University of Dallas at the end of September. As moderator for the panel, I was intrigued by how the speakers thought about this particular art.

Jeanine Pitras, a translator of Latin American poetry, talked about translation as the solving of a mystery, that of bringing one language and culture into another. That too sounded like marriage talk.  Jason Baxter, who is currently translating Dante’s Commedia, talked about the need of the translator to convey the impressions given not just by denotations but also by the types of language used. He described the “high/low diglossism” of Dante—a fancy way of saying that sometimes the poet uses the exalted language of philosophers and theologians and sometimes the language of the streets. Figuring out how to get not only the right meaning but the right vibe to the translation is key. Should I translate the word as “devour” or “gulp”? I wondered if this tendency to use both levels in a work is intrinsically Catholic and Christian? After all, the Incarnation is the supreme mixture of high and low. God the Father translates the fullness of his mysteries to us by writing the Word in the rather humorously loopy font of human nature.

Translation, you might say, is revelation all the way up because it is revelation all the way down. It is one of the most difficult and ubiquitous acts of human beings. It’s not just that the world or the airport or even your town is filled with people of different languages. Even when we speak the same variant of the same language, we often find ourselves like the people of the biblical Babel, who were very clear on the project—make a name for ourselves in the heavens—but fell to incoherence by the time it was completed. I often have to ask one of my kids, “What does Mom’s message to me mean?” More often she is asking the kids what mine means, but this is the point.

Teaching is clearly an act of translating. So too writing. Frederick Turner, a translator of central European poetry, went off the rails in his presentation at the end by advocating for a new religion based on the scientific method. August Comte, call your office. But before he did, he made the very interesting point that “Every poet, to be a poet, is a translator.” He described the process of writing poetry as that of taking an “internal language” and translating it into “the written one.” It’s not just poets. I find myself that almost any worthwhile essay starts as a very vivid internal set of words and impressions for which I must struggle to find the prose to convey what I am trying to say.

The process can be tough, for I often discover that what was there in my internal language was partly right and partly wrong. But even when I still think I am right, getting the words to convey what I mean to others is hard. I have often quoted the sportswriter Red Smith, who observed, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is open up a vein and bleed.” The blood, along with the sweat, tears, and often coffee, that is shed is shed in service of trying to avoid being a traitor to the fullness of meaning that one feels is a gift one wants to share, a marriage one wants to make. It involves a great deal of knowledge and also a heart that listens to both sides and struggles mightily to bring truth from another realm into the one in which I live so that others might see it and be glad.

It is an intimate art, this translation business. But it is the art of creatures like we humans, who live always on the border of matter and spirit, trying to marry together the infinite and the finite, the spiritual and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is “Scholar Sharpening His Quill” (1633) by Gerrit Dou, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Adblock test (Why?)

Best Practices for the Translation of Official and Legal Documents - JD Supra - Translation

Based on 2018 census data, 67.3 million U.S. residents, both immigrants and native-born, speak a language other than English at home. As we near 2023, it’s safe to say that number has likely grown. Stats like this underscore the need for services that support language translation, including the ability to translate official and legal documents.

With legal proceedings ramping up again post-pandemic, and more immigrants and foreign visitors entering the U.S. than ever before, the demand for legal document translation services has been on the rise.

If you find yourself in need of a document translation service, it’s important to understand why and when the translation of official documents is required before you move forward. Here are some points to keep in mind.

When Translation of Official and Legal Documents is Required

Translation refers primarily to written documentation. Any legal case going through the discovery process, which includes a client or witness that speaks a foreign language, will have documents that require translation for use in depositions or as exhibits in court. In addition, given the complexity of legal verbiage itself, courts require translation to be provided if an individual is not completely fluent in English.

Any type of document or written text considered pertinent to a case can be translated for legal purposes. Depending on the type of law involved, this could include text messages, WhatsApp conversations, social posts, emails, accident claims, business agreements, birth certificates, contracts, sales forms, divorce papers, prenups from another country, or prenups written here and translated into the language of the spouse.

If it’s in written form, and intended for use in a legal proceeding, it must be translated, submitted, and filed. It must have a certificate of accuracy. Certified translation services demonstrate that the translator understood the language of the original document and translated it to the best of their ability.

In terms of the types of organizations that require official document translation, it runs the gamut. Any organization that works with clients in other countries, or with clients who are not fluent in English within the U.S., will have a need for this service. The majority, however, are legal firms and the attorneys who work for them, including any firm that has an office outside of the U.S. or that deals with cases pertaining to foreign individuals or entities.

How to Translate Official Documents

When it comes to the act of translating official documents, there are two primary methods used depending on the circumstance:

AI Document Translation

AI, or machine-based, translation is used primarily when there are mass volumes of documents during the discovery phase. For example, if a client has a patent case with thousands of written pages and needs to translate them to determine which documents should be submitted as evidence.

At this volume, machine translation comes in at a lower cost than human document translation, but with an accuracy rate of only about 80%-90%. For this reason, and because it does not involve a human being, it cannot have a certificate of accuracy associated with it or be submitted into court proceedings. As a rule, AI document translation is considered ideal when fast turnaround times and lower costs, rather than accuracy, are a priority.

Human Document Translation

Once AI translation has determined which specific pages or documents should be used, a human translator must officially translate each document and ensure that a certificate of accuracy accompanies the court submission.

When the highest level of accuracy is required, human translation is the only option. In addition to meeting legal standards, human translation provides greater familiarity with dialects, nuances of languages, and legal terminology compared to literal AI translations that lack the ability to detect slang or double meaning within a phrase.

Considerations for Selecting an Official Document Translation Provider

When the time comes to select an official document translation company, keep these considerations in mind:

• Providers who only offer AI document translation cannot provide a certificate of accuracy, so if you move forward with filing those documents in court, you risk legal repercussions.
• Those who solely provide AI translation will put forth a literal translation of a document, which could go against your case depending on what you’re trying to prove.

• Make sure any provider that offers AI-based document translation uses an SOC Type 2-compliant platform with robust security measures.
• Select a provider with strong adherence to security protocols, including two-factor authentication and secure sharing practices vs. using Gmail or another unprotected avenue.
• Look for a provider that is familiar with many languages and dialects, and how phrases can differ in meaning from one country to another.
• Find a provider with experience in technical cases and legal terminology. For example, the fifth amendment is a legal concept that exists in the U.S., but not other countries. It’s important to be able to translate a word that may not exist in the language it’s being translated into.

One final consideration: If you choose to not use a professional legal translation provider, and instead opt for an AI-based online program, keep in mind that many of the more commonly used programs are free. This means they are widely available and that, once a document has been translated, that information remains accessible on the internet to anyone determined enough to look for it. This is a crucial issue, given legal documents and their contents are highly sensitive and private. If an attorney runs his or her documents through these platforms, they open themselves up to possible security threats and breaches, and further liabilities.

Closing Arguments for Using Official Document Translation Services

There are 7,151 languages spoken worldwide today. Around 422 of those languages are currently spoken in the United States. Given this, it’s not surprising that the global legal translation services market is expected to grow at a rate of 2.37% CAGR from 2021-2027, reaching nearly $45 Billion by 2027.

This rise in demand reflects what I’ve experienced in the legal document translation arena, with the need for these services rising dramatically from when I started in the industry nearly 20 years ago.

Given those legal proceedings are official and binding, it’s of the greatest importance to ensure you and all parties fully understand the contents of every document involved in a legal case. Using an experienced professional translation services provider puts you in the best position to understand, and act on, legal filings.

Adblock test (Why?)

Lost in translation: St. John's airport admits its French needs work - CBC.ca - Translation

The St. John's International Airport says it needs to do better, after Radio-Canada documented a series of poorly translated signs and messages months after the airport was fined thousands for violating official language requirements.

Lisa Bragg, the airport's vice-president of business development and marketing, acknowledged the airport authority has work to do.

"We make mistakes and all kinds of ways we're going to own them and we're going to fix them as best we can," said Bragg. "It's not that you meant to do it, but there's going to be episodic errors that occur from time to time, and we're not immune to that."

Radio-Canada, the CBC's French-language broadcaster, presented the airport authority with a number of examples of crude translations at the airport, including posters and the airport's website and social media posts. Located in a provincial capital and welcoming more than 1.5 million passengers a year before the pandemic, the airport is required by law to provide both English and French language services to travellers.

In the case of one poster in a bathroom, the play on words "If you're happy and you know it wash your hands" became "Si tu es content et vous le savez, lavez-vous les mains" in French. The joke doesn't make sense in French and the sentence is grammatically incorrect, containing both formal and informal verb tenses.

A poorly worded poster in a bathroom at St. John's International Airport directly translates an English play on words that doesn't make sense in French. There are also grammatical errors. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)

Another poster read "Regardez-vous, arborant ce masque!", a cringe-worthy translation of, "Look at you, rocking that mask!"

A French tweet from the airport described a new "non-stop road to Toronto-Pearson" ("route sans escale vers Toronto-Pearson"). Another wished passengers a happy Thanksgiving by writing "Joyeux Action de Grâces" instead of "Joyeuse Action de grâces."

A poorly translated tweet from St. John's International Airport. In French, the word 'route' isn't used to describe a flight path. (Twitter)

'We're trying to be much more conscious'

Bragg said several posters have already been removed, although some tweets hadn't been deleted Tuesday morning. She said the airport authority is "not a huge organization" and that it relies on Halifax-based firm Text in Context for most of its translation. However, in certain cases a library of pre-translated phrases was also used for smaller translation jobs, which led to errors.

"That is, at times, where we've introduced some errors. So we're trying to be much more conscious to make sure and double-check and verify anything where we have," Bragg said. "I'll put it this way: anything where we have to spend money for a sign, for example, that is going to live for a while, we will make sure that the translation is the best it can be."

Another poorly translated poster in a bathroom at St. John's Airport. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)

Bragg said there were fewer travellers in the airport during the pandemic and one of the poorly translated posters was up for more than a year before anyone complained. 

"When it came to our attention, we fixed it immediately. But that also kind of speaks to the fact that we've had less traffic and we have less French-speaking passengers," Bragg said.

"If someone notices something, reach out to the airport. We would be happy, more than happy. We would actually welcome the feedback."

A misspelled French tweet from St. John's International Airport. In French, 'Happy Thanksgiving' is spelled 'Joyeuse Action de grâce' or 'Joyeuse Action de grâces.' (Twitter)

Airport authority fined $11K in April

Radio-Canada documented the bad translations months after the airport authority was ordered to pay $11,000 for violating official language requirements. A Federal Court judge found last April the airport had adopted a too-narrow interpretation of its language obligations by not translating most of its social media posts, as well as its annual reports and press releases. 

The airport authority is appealing the decision, which it feels would expand requirements far beyond their intended purpose.

French not at 'acceptable level'

In a statement, the head of the Newfoundland and Labrador's Francophone federation said bilingual services were "all but absent" a few years ago and that it's important to highlight the major progress made since. But Gaël Cobineau, executive director of the Fédération des francophones de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador, said the airport "has very clear official language obligations and there is still some way to go."

"In the past, we have tried to contact the airport's communications department to discuss this informally and constructively, but we have never heard back from them," said Corbineau.

"In the absence of any direct dialogue, we now report any errors we find by filing complaints with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, which is quite effective. Many errors have since been corrected, but there are still some and new ones appear over time."

Corbineau said the airport needs to realize it "lacks capacity internally" to communicate in French at an "acceptable level," pointing to several boutiques and restaurants where service in French is often unavailable.

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador

Adblock test (Why?)