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and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical - Sorry but I have to disagree here. Look at UN, they have Arabic, Chinese, English, Fr
by born2discover 7y ago
and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical - Sorry but I have to disagree here. Look at UN, they have Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish as official languages.
Why is there an absolute must to only have one official language? Why not chose several most widely spoken ones, including English, and let each speaker chose the one that suits them best?
I live in a country where we have 4 national languages and 3 official ones. Our members of parliament can express themselves in the language of their choosing and their speech/intervention is translated for the rest. That way people can express themselves in the language they are most comfortable in (that is often not English, unless it's their mother tongue) and that does not put older generations (who never learnt English) at a disadvantage.
Having one single language in a multicultural setting can be tricky.
- isolli 7y agoCurious, what country is that?
- ttoinou 7y agoSwitzerland ?
- valb 7y agoAFAIK Switzerland has 4 official languages
- born2discover 7y agoYes, we have 4 national languages: French, German, Italian and Romansh. However only three of them bear the title of official language, that is, language used in official communications. Romansh is spoken only in one of our "provinces" (Canton Graubünden) thus is considered too tiny to be supported on the national scale for official purposes.
- kstenerud 7y agoBecause having multiple official languages adds more layers of bureaucracy to everything and amounts to a colossal waste of time and money. We have this in Canada, and outside of Quebec, nobody cares about the French language. In fact, many manufacturers specifically avoid Canada in some cases due to the requirement to put both English and French on the packaging. All government communication has to be written twice. Government employees must have fluency in both languages. All that waste, and for what? A language that nobody else uses.
- barking 7y agoYou'd still expect manufacterers to put your language on packaging and for the government to communicate with you in it, I presume?
- kstenerud 7y agoYes, but without the requirement to have two languages on the packaging, you can have one design for both Canada and the USA. Canada is a tiny market by comparison, so it's often not worth the expense of designing separate multi-language packaging just for them.
- born2discover 7y agoI would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it. If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.
- kstenerud 7y agoIt's not just the words themselves; you need a completely different package design. It's not like in Europe where the package is mostly the same except for some language-specific section. In Canada, you need to translate EVERYTHING, including the slogan [1], and even the name in some cases. Every English sentence must be translated and presented in equal size in French. You can call it good/bad business practice all you want. Real manufacturers do make conscious decisions to avoid the Canadian market due to these costs. The reality is that we suffer because of this policy. There is one silver lining, however: Online retailers like Amazon seem to be exempt. [1] http://blog.generalmills.com/wp-content/uploads/Honey-Nut-Cheerios-Canada-Bees-2.jpg http://blog.generalmills.com/wp-content/uploads/Honey-Nut-Ch...
- onlydeadheroes 7y agoAssuming nothing is lost in translation. Such a system is totally blind to this issue.