The one where Andy gets on his soapbox...

So I get in to work this morning to be confronted by a couple of articles cut out from a recent copy of 'The Guardian' on my desk. I've managed to find the on-line version of one but not the other. And that's a shame, as the second kind of complements the first.

They're both about languages, one about translating, the other about their teaching. The first one is something which makes me smile but simultaneously reassures me that, as a translator, I'll likely have work for a reasonable amount of time. It's from Wednesday's edition, is written by Jon Henley (click link for original, mine's a summary) and goes like this:

Babel Fish, the online translation site, has nearly caused a diplomatic row after a group of Israeli journalists decided to use it to address some questions to officials at the Dutch foreign ministry, rather than get the work done professionally by translators.

If any of you have ever used Babel Fish you'll know just how spectacularly bad it can be. Indeed online translation machines like this are so bad one was used to form the basis of a game played on Radio 1 where a song lyric would be put, in English, into one of these things, translated through at least one foreign language before being put back into English. The results were almost always completely incomprehensible and bore no relation to the original song.

I also know (and have told some of you the story) of one company who used one of these sites to translate all their promotional material into French and German, then wondered why they'd not heard anything from any of the people they sent the stuff to, in French- and German-speaking countries.

So the upshot of this first article is that I can sleep a little easier knowing I might be in work for a little while to come. But the second article (which I can't find online), by Marcel Berlins, discusses the poor quality of language teaching in schools, the government's 2003 decision to abandon compulsory language teaching in secondary schools, and the fact that all this comes at a time when the world is becoming more and more open to communication and with it learning foreign languages, while the UK is by and large burying its head in the sand and resolutely sticking to its arrogant belief that the rest of the world speaks English so why bother learning another language.

Great for me, professionally, but sad. I now do a little bit of tutoring to an AS level student of French and I was stunned to see the gaps in knowledge of certain things (not her fault, a fault of the teaching she's had), fairly basic, and the errors in the materials she's been given to study French. But I was equally amazed at the fact that at the same time as she has those gaps in knowledge about France and quirky bits of culture specific to France (in this case the 'départements') she is expected to debate all the kinds of issues I remember having to discuss in my GCSE English Oral Exam (euthanasia, abortion, homosexuality etc). Surely to learn a language it's of benefit to know a bit about the country before being expected to discuss its social issues in depth?

OK, rant over...

12/11/07 - UPDATE: I've now found the second article on-line. It's here, the fourth paragraph being the start of the relevant bit.