The Blog for Culture Vultures

The police in Portsmouth have taken an interesting approach to communicating with non-English speaking shoppers. As part of an initiative by Plymouth Against Retail Crime (Parc),  translation packs are being given to large stores, with some going to police patrol cars used around the city centre too.

The packs contain 13 cards, each carrying phrases in a foreign language and their English translation. Languages include Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French and Farsi. The cards can be used in situations where a foreigner needs help or is suspected of a crime in a store.

Although its a shame the cards are being used within the context of criminal activity it does demonstrate the understanding that simple actions such as phrases does make a difference. Wouldn't it be nice if staff could also get translation cards with simple greetings instead though?

Read more > Translation packs

The police in Portsmouth have taken an interesting approach to communicating with non-English speaking shoppers. As part of an initiative by Plymouth Against Retail Crime (Parc),  translation packs are being given to large stores, with some going to police patrol cars used around the city centre too.

The packs contain 13 cards, each carrying phrases in a foreign language and their English translation. Languages include Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French and Farsi. The cards can be used in situations where a foreigner needs help or is suspected of a crime in a store.

Although its a shame the cards are being used within the context of criminal activity it does demonstrate the understanding that simple actions such as phrases does make a difference. Wouldn't it be nice if staff could also get translation cards with simple greetings instead though?

Read more > Translation packs

It is a well-intended initiative which is meant to offer immigrants a helping hand. Yet now an investigation has found that many of the expensively-produced foreign-language leaflets have never been read.

Documents which have failed to attract a single reader include a pamphlet for gipsies translated into Polish, and a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender directory translated into French.

No-one read the Haringey Women's Directory when it was translated into Albanian, Bengali, Kurdish, Somali or Urdu.

All were made available by Haringey council, in north London, on its website, which records the number of times each document is downloaded.

A spokesman for Haringey Council said: “Haringey has some 193 different languages spoken. We generally offer translations where required rather than translate routinely.

"Where translations are produced they will be made available on our website as an additional service.”

Read more > Telegraph

The increasing number of foreigners in the UK is resulting in police forces strething to "bursting point." This according to leaked memos reported in the press today.  One chief constable commented his force had been "underfunded for years" in its battle to cope with a growing number of immigrants which has left resources strained. Police also note that extra translation and bureaucratic costs are resulting.

Read more > UK Police 

Three Korean films and a cartoon have been translated for immigrant workers and foreigners married to Koreans here. About 10 immigrants from Southeast Asian countries participated in the translation project to help people settle down in Korea more easily.

Three movies, ``Wolf Daddy,'' ``Stand by Me’’ and ``Walking in the Rainy Day’’ and a cartoon cooking guide were translated into four languages, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Chinese and English. The cartoon contains recipes for various Korean dishes and is already popular among foreign workers.

``My Filipino friends asked me to translate a Korean cartoon and movie into Tagalong and I did the job for almost three months from September last year,’’ said Maria Judids Bublacion, 38. Maria is married to a Korean here. ``It is my pleasure to help them. I hope to get more opportunities to do this kind of job for immigrants here,’’ she added.

Cultural Action (CA), a non-profit civic organization, organized the translation project, which it pursued in cooperation with a cartoon company and the Association of Korea Independent Film & Video funded by the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs.

Read more > Korea 

“When you're looking at skills and technical professions there's a good body there of commonality,” said Tom Ryan, who's in charge of Communitech's recruitment strategy. “What we also find is culture shock. We find culture shock and language as a two-part killer.”

Not always, according to Herbert Hess, president of Hess Associates, which provides a placement service for people looking for work in the IT sector. Hess said that while language and culture shock can be a problem for some immigrants looking for work, people from countries such as India are used to working 10 to 14 hours a day - the kind of work ethic employers are looking for. “They've got language skills, communication skills and are very well educated. They don't seem to have a problem in terms of fitting in.”

Hess said he's seeing more Middle Eastern people looking for work nowadays compared to previous years, when Russian and Asian workers dominated the field.

Read more: Hess 

Most Canadians know so little about their own country that they would flunk the basic test that new immigrants are required to take before becoming citizens, according to a poll released on Friday.

The Ipsos-Reid survey showed that 60 percent of Canadians would fail the test. A similar poll done in 1997 showed a failure rate of 45 percent.

"Canadians appear to be losing knowledge when it comes to the most basic questions about Canadian history, politics, culture and geography ... (they) performed abysmally on some questions," the firm said in a statement.

Read more: Canada

The impact of foreign immigrants on the translation costs for Northern Ireland's courts has been revealed today. The Court Service had to fork out almost £200,000 to hire 946 language interpreters during 2006, according to figures released by the Government.

The figures give one indication of the dramatic changes happening in the increasingly multi-cultural Northern Ireland as workers flood in from far and wide, boosting what is a thriving economy. They reveal 936 translators were engaged to work in criminal court cases during 2006. The most often featured languages were:

1. Lithuanian 344.

2. Polish 209.

3. Russian 90.

4. Portuguese 63.

5. Mandarin 43.

Read more: Ulster Courts