Trilingual Obsessions

I read an interesting article by María Reímondez in the Xornal de Galicia today. It deals with what she describes as “our government’s* obsession with learning English”. Reímondez thinks that (I am paraphrasing here, hopefully not too much) more people around her would benefit from learning or improving their Galician rather than English because they’d get more chance to use it.

This seems to me a reasonable observation. From a selfish point of view, the “obsession with English” has served me well because it has provided me with an opportunity to make a living and with opportunities to live and work all over the world if I so wish.

I do sometimes wonder why some students are taking English classes. Some reach a peak and fail to progress. English plays little part in their everyday lives and rarely even features on TV due to dubbing. Furthermore, the amount of English needed to communicate with customers in the average Galician workplace is not high and little English is needed to communicate on a superficial level in order to get by on holiday abroad. Certainly nothing like the level of English that is required to benefit from the kind of trilingual education system that is being talked up.

In my opinion, the general levels of English in schools are not nearly good enough at the moment to cope with that. If pupils are struggling to learn in Galician (as some claim) then how on earth are they going to manage in a language as different as English? The English levels of teachers is another important factor that I don’t think has been properly thought out. Basically, both Spanish and autonomous governments are talking a good game but it amounts to little more than that. Of course, English is useful in many countries but it is also “cool” and prestigious so it sounds good to talk up these possibilities in order to appear less insular and more cosmopolitan. Yet, few of these politicians appear able to speak English to any decent level and it doesn't hold them back too much.

I have my doubts about the sincerity of these targets. The attempt to deflect the current debate away from Galician by using English as a smokescreen may have a lot to do with it.

Reímondez correctly points out that it is normally speakers of major international languages that think the rest of the world has to conform to their way of speaking. This may well be alluding to Spanish speakers as well but she cites the example of a BBC journalist who wanted a German politician to answer him in English even though they were in Germany. She also says (again with some validity) that these speakers of international languages are the ones who struggle most to learn other languages. In my view, this has a lot to do with both necessity and political power.

The article goes on to claim that it would be a lot easier for Galicians to learn another international language – Portuguese. There is little doubt about that due to the amount of shared vocabulary, grammar, etc. Not to mention the fact that it might be more practical due to geographical location – Galicians could go to Portugal and use the language well, do more business there, etc. In fact, they already know a lot of Portuguese and it is largely a question of exposure and adapting to different pronunciation.

In terms of moving, emigrating or working abroad, how useful is English for them? Well, it depends where they go. Very useful in some places but not especially in other parts of Spain or Latin America. Nobody would deny that it is more important to know Spanish than English in these places so why does the same not equally apply to Galician in Galicia? English may be useful to a degree in Switzerland but French or German would be a better option I suspect.

In short, I come back to this thought. The usefulness of a language depends on personal circumstances and geography rather than the numbers of speakers a language has. From time to time, I hear people say things like “Chinese is more useful than Galician, Catalan, Basque, etc." That may be true if you want to go to China or wish to hang out with the local Chinese community but surely not if you live in one of the aforementioned territories.

*I think this is a reference to the Xunta (Galician government) but it could apply to the Spanish government as well to some extent.

Fishing for Prepositions

The World Fishing Exhibition took place in Vigo a couple of weeks ago. To celebrate the event, the Xornal de Galicia took the step of publishing some English translations of the World Fishing content within its pages.

The editorial headline “Fishing the future” sounded strange to the English ear, basically lacking a preposition as well as a capital letter. In other words, “Fishing for the Future” would have sounded much better. Sadly, the articles in English got worse as I read on. I don’t know whether the translations were done by non-natives, translation tools or English speakers with little experience of translation.

In any case, it would appear that the Xornal had fallen into the common trap of presenting English for marketing purposes while hoping that the poor quality of the translations would not be noticed. Many native speakers will pick up on this, as well as others proficient in the given language.

The translation business is no different from any other in that if you take the cheap option, you are likely to end up with a sub-standard product. Incidentally, I am not the type who spends a lot of time complaining about bad translations, let’s face it they are everywhere so it would be very time consuming. But I expected better from the Xornal of Galicia as it is a newspaper which normally takes the topic of language very seriously.

No Problem for Noll

Excerpt from interview with Brazilian author, João Giberto Noll in the Xornal de Galicia (29th Sept. 2009).

Interviewer: Will we have difficulty understanding each other?

JGN: None at all. I’m very impresed with the similarities between Galician and Portuguese. Of course, I know about the existence of this language in Spain and of its historical and theoretical relationship with ours (Portuguese). But I didn’t realise the extent to which there is massive identification between the two. This is great because it allows you to understand and be understood in another country, as we saw yesterday in the group interview. It’s wonderful.