A strange lack of English
May. 30th, 2022 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcThere are many fluently multilingual people in the world, I have met and worked with plenty myself. One thing that still surprises me is the apparent difficulty of well-resourced organizations in managing to hire any of them.
Some time ago, I reported here how Toshiba apparently can't even find somebody who knows English to write their microwave manuals. Right now, I'm listening to CNN interviews with Eastern European leaders where the translator has a voice, intonation, accent that are so strange as to be positively distracting, it's like me trying to pronounce French starting from my own odd English accent, they sound like a tourist from some satire. Similarly, only half the newsreaders for NHK's world news sound comfortable in pronouncing English. I don't much care which version of English, anything from Indian to Jamaican to Singaporean to South African would do, I just want it to sound more as if they grew up with it than are struggling with it. Thank goodness some of the other leaders, like Sweden's finance minister, speak decent English so we don't have to suffer a CNN translator.
I can believe that part of the issue is that translators aren't appreciated or paid enough. I also wonder if the people selecting them aren't qualified to do so, maybe they just look at certifications rather than having native English speakers actually listen to them. But, goodness, when you are producing English-language materials that have such large reach or audience, surely there are people within those corporations reading or hearing this stuff, wincing, and feeding back to management,
Maybe I am supposed to be more inclusive in some sense, I'd have just thought that people whose English wasn't at all natural wouldn't be getting the major jobs, that they would lose out to the many who, while maybe not being English, at least speak a version of the language comfortably, even if their own accent shows through. Maybe not.
Some time ago, I reported here how Toshiba apparently can't even find somebody who knows English to write their microwave manuals. Right now, I'm listening to CNN interviews with Eastern European leaders where the translator has a voice, intonation, accent that are so strange as to be positively distracting, it's like me trying to pronounce French starting from my own odd English accent, they sound like a tourist from some satire. Similarly, only half the newsreaders for NHK's world news sound comfortable in pronouncing English. I don't much care which version of English, anything from Indian to Jamaican to Singaporean to South African would do, I just want it to sound more as if they grew up with it than are struggling with it. Thank goodness some of the other leaders, like Sweden's finance minister, speak decent English so we don't have to suffer a CNN translator.
I can believe that part of the issue is that translators aren't appreciated or paid enough. I also wonder if the people selecting them aren't qualified to do so, maybe they just look at certifications rather than having native English speakers actually listen to them. But, goodness, when you are producing English-language materials that have such large reach or audience, surely there are people within those corporations reading or hearing this stuff, wincing, and feeding back to management,
my goodness, we really need to do this differently henceforth? And if I were wanting to do this stuff professionally, I'd be taking elocution lessons and suchlike.
Maybe I am supposed to be more inclusive in some sense, I'd have just thought that people whose English wasn't at all natural wouldn't be getting the major jobs, that they would lose out to the many who, while maybe not being English, at least speak a version of the language comfortably, even if their own accent shows through. Maybe not.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-30 05:27 pm (UTC)Heh, it reminds me a bit of singers. Some fairly rotten singers get national television exposure and some great singers can be heard busking in town centers or even in karaoke bars.