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A Laff a Minet (A laugh a Minute)

Reader comment on item: America the Multicultural

Submitted by Pied Piper (Saudi Arabia), Oct 1, 2014 at 09:38

IBX better avail itself of another translation service because there are all kinds of errors in its "Multi-language interpreter services" publication.

1. As Dr. Pipes points out, English is not a foreign language in the USA. Therefore, there should be no section in English in this specific publication.

2. Note that all the languages in bold lettering at the beginning of each language section are in English. They should be in the specific language described. (Presumably, a Chinese speaker, for example, would not know how to read "CHINESE" as written in English – he'd have to see it in Chinese script to know this is the Chinese section). Only one language gets this correct…..Portuguese….it's even written with the correct accent mark. All the other languages should follow this practice. (Why would only Portuguese be written correctly and every other language incorrectly?)

3. I have to correct Dr. Pipes with regard his remark that since IBX allots a paragraph each to Chinese dialects Mandarin and Cantonese, the same should hold true for Arabic, since Arabic has at least 5 major dialect groups. The difference, of course, is that Arabic uses only 1 written form for all the dialects (the so-called Modern Standard Arabic) so all literate Arabic speakers WRITE in the same standard language regardless of their spoken dialect. The same is not true for Chinese Mandarin and Cantonese.

However, the Arabic section does indeed have a major error. THE TELEPHONE NUMBER IS WRITTEN BACKWARDS !! Even though Arabic is written and read from right to left (unlike English) the numbers are written and read like English….from left to right. This is the most glaring error of the entire publication and shows the editors of this publication are waaaaay in over their heads in this little project.

(Also, both Chinese and Arabic have their own characters for the numbers……why are they using English (European) numbers?

What else? O yeah, a couple of more bloopers I saw just in passing:

4. HINDI has its own section, but what about URDU? Each language has approximately the same number of speakers in the USA and although the 2 languages are almost the same, they use completely unrelated alphabets. Hindi uses the so-called Devengari script (as found in this pamphlet) while Urdu uses a modified Persian/Arabic script. By just using the Hindi script, IBX in effect, fails to provide this service to nearly ½ of Hindi-Urdu speakers in the USA.

5. I suppose one can "forgive" errors in these "weird" languages, but what about in such a common language as Italian (Eye-Talian)? We find an error here too: in the third line you find the word: "…..Italianovi….". It should be 2 words, not one: "…..italiano vi….."

6. Many of the languages do not capitalize languages. German, for one. Yet all of these languages that have capitals show the language name capitalized. It's "deutsch", not "Deutsch"…….and so on.

FINAL GRADE: F

Submitting....

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Reader comments (13) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
1It is not my responsibility to pay for an American citizen who does not learn English. [125 words]JudyOct 1, 2014 21:53218378
1Soon you will be like Canada [30 words]max from WinnipegOct 7, 2014 06:30218378
1We are the BORG [134 words]Michael S.Oct 1, 2014 13:56218372
We are from the government we are here to help you [11 words]max from WinnipegOct 7, 2014 06:32218372
The Borg can't assimilate the sunset [380 words]Michael S.Oct 10, 2014 03:57218372
Values count [114 words]Doug MayfieldOct 1, 2014 13:40218371
1the more multicultural a society... [13 words]mythOct 1, 2014 11:24218370
A Laff a Minet (A laugh a Minute) [485 words]Pied PiperOct 1, 2014 09:38218367
Simple and to the point. [30 words]mtalex123Sep 30, 2014 21:22218360
Hello, my name is [your name here] [139 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
Bob FriedelSep 30, 2014 20:47218359
1Multiculturalism is death to American the great [72 words]NuritGSep 30, 2014 19:02218355
1Mandated multiculturalism? [112 words]Edward ClineSep 30, 2014 18:21218350
1Multinational, Multicultural Greed [113 words]DaveSep 30, 2014 17:13218348

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