Newsnight item - Cost of translation services

[twelvedaysofchristmas]

Did anyone see the item on Newsnight last night about how much it costs the taxpayer to provide translation services?

I know having your rights explained to you in your own language is a legal right, should you be in trouble with the police. However, they managed to find a Turkish woman, who has lived in the UK for 3 years, who was having "how to stop smoking" explained to her in Turkish at her GPs office. At the cost of the taxpayer!

I makes me angry. I wouldn't expect to move to say, Japan and be provided with medical care or social services leaflets in English. Granted, I know English speakers have it easy in that many poeple's second language is English, but I don't expect anyone to be able to converse with me.

I can't help agreeing with some of the contributors, that by providing, for example, all government services to Bangladeshi women in Bengali; it's actually isolating them and causing them not to learn English at all.

Thoughts?

I found it a fascinating piece as I am as left softy liberal as they come but thought that the human rights lwayer had some good points and I had not thought that by providing translation services we are isolating the child.

Fascinating backdrop t whatis going on in the school I teachin whwere we have a polish child who is causing havoc in school and we have no way of communicating with her or her famoly as they have no english at all.

People should learn English if they live here but whilst they are learning it they will need the services of a translator.

twinset - contact your local council, they will (should!) have a department that can help you. There is also a phone translating system you can use (pricey though) I don't know the name of the top of my head, but if you're interested I can find out. I didn't see Newsnight last night, but I would have been quite interested as that is DHs job - not doing it, but arranging translation and interpreting (he specifically arranges BSL and 'brailles' documents . He works for a council, but they do it for all sorts of services within the borough, including schools, GPs etc. Interpreters etc are paid huge amounts of money!

Agree that we should help those who have recently arrived here, or for essential services where understanding everything is of utmost important, but it rather galls me that people who have been here for years and years have made no effort to learn the language. (In some cases I understand that it is discouraged within the family, but that's another issue.)

It seems an unnecessary expense to provide, for example, council leaflets on recycling in a variety of languages. I noticed when I lived in Camden that the council newspaper had pages in various languages.

And I had to laugh when newsnight phoned a number of councils asking if they would provide bus timetables and leisure centre information in Polish and most of them agreed. An outrageous expense, imo.

Think the money would be better spent ensuring your Polish student could learn English at school, Twinset, without causing the massive disruption you are suffering at the moment, than know what time she can go swimming!

My dh was involved in a car accident in France. In all his dealings with the police and hospital, he was never offered an interpreter. It made a difficult time even more difficult.

They do ahve a department that have aranged axtra literacy help and have funded a translator once a week. THe problem is that the girl has decided that she doesn't like both of these people so refuses to talk to either of them. THey ahve recommedned that she goes to another locla secondary that has a few polish kids as that will help her intergrate.

Mmmmm, I'm English but live in Sweden, with my English husband and 2 English children. We are all learning Swedish at different rates and it is taking a long time to get anywhere near proficient. Here in Sweden they provide loads of information in English (and many other languages) and most documents are available translated.
Were it not for this service life would be very difficult for us and I am always grateful for it. We don't expect it but will not turn it down in order to better out Swedish, somethings are too important to take a chance on our bad languge skills. However this is not stopping me from learning the language either, it's actually helping us.
Please do not assume that it is preventing us from learning Swedish.

Really difficult situation and quite hard on the Polish kids in that other school as it's kind of lumping responsibility on them.

My daughter went to an Irish speaking school before we moved here. Though English was her first language to speak, she found getting through school, particularly reading, quite difficult. She also had to have extra literacy, but it was a like it or lump it and rightly so.

I know a number of people who moved to the Gaeltacht (Irish speaking) areas of Ireland as kids. EVERYONE speaks only Irish (by choice - all understand English) and again, for those English speaking kids it was sink or swim. They just had to listen, be patient and get on with it.

It's a shame the council can't offer somene more than 2 days a week but the impetus is also on the child's parents to encourage her.

Mrs Mills, I wouldn't assume at all. On the programme, they actually interviewed some women in the East End of London who were very open about the fact that they didn't need to learn English as almost every shop was Bangladeshi owned, Bengali newspapers were available, the doctor's surgury had Bengali doctors and translators and the council provided translators.

You are obviously trying hard and I absolutely think that providing some translation services is a great idea. Just not all.

When we moved to France we had no translator, nor were we offered one. We had to find jobs, a house to rent, a school for dd, a nursery for ds, sign onto the health service and the council register etc etc - all requiring masses of paperwork to be filled in and interviews with officials etc. We struggled along with our limited French but we got there in the end and I think if we weren't pushed, we wouldn't have learnt French as quickly.

Sure a translator would have made things a lot easier and simpler and we would have signed up for things a lot quicker and been aware of what benefits we were entitled to and what we had to do etc. As it was, we had to rely on good-natured work colleagues/neighbours who spoke a bit of English to help us out. But we made friends that way!

Dd started school speaking hardly any French and the teachers couldn't help her, but a few months in she was soon picking it up and left France bi-lingual after 2 years.

We found it all very intimidating and unhelpful at the time, but now we are glad we were pushed to learn as we went along, and after all, why should they make it easy for us? They didn't ask us to go to their country, we just turned up with our limited language skills. We couldn't expect to just walk into the benefit system and schools and so on could we?

Perhaps the British should adopt a more European attitude?

I think this is not an isolated problem just happening in the UK. You would be surprised at the number of Europeans who find large populations of English speakers, who have lived abroad for decades and can only say a few words in the local language (most of them, the sort of words you as a native speaker will hate to hear), so irritating, especially when they complain about nobody being able to understand English.

Although I agree that paying a tranlator to translate non urgent/life-saving information it's a bit off... But then if most Indians and Pakistanies are fluent in English is because the people who have invaded them refused to learn the local language... wonder if this is history finding its own balance...perhaps if Britain intervention in Turkey had been longer most Turkish people would speak English! [sarcastic emoticon]

I don;t think they wanted the poslish kids in the other school to do much more than chat to her at break, as naughty as this girl is and her behaviour is shocking in school I do feel for her trapped in this strange building unbale to communicate all day.

My dd coped twinsetandpearls.

THus girl isn't , we are not even sure thatsheis in the right year group the lines of communiaction are so poor she will justsay nothing to us or thr translator and is just running wild around our school

THus girl has more problems than her language barrier.

Oh.

Ah, the Sun-reading, living in an English-speaking gated community, egg & chips eating, Costa del Sol brigade in Spain (and other places) get rightly up my nose as well.

Wonder WTF they moved abroad for if they want to live the same lives as they did in the UK. Might as well have moved to Kent. Global warming has the South East almost as hot as the continent anyway.

Quite right twelve days, bloody indolence, makes me mad, what a waste of our money

And I think it's just as awful when the lazy brits live abroad and can't be arsed to learn the ling, so, so embarassing

oi - lay off egg and chips will ya!

but anyway, I have met a lot of the costa del sol expats of which you speak - one family who lived there for 20 years whose kids didn't speak spanish . they move to spain because of the weather, nothing more. there are a lot of them. and funnily enough they all seem to read the mail or the sun judging by the piles of those papers in the newsagents.

but anyway, back to the op: I didn't see newsnight, but did see a report on the 10 o clock news. thought it was rather badly reported actually - they gave a figure for the total amount spent by taxpayers on translation, and then said "some of this is necessary...but some isn't..." without actually giving a price for the unneccessary stuff or having a debate about what is and isn't necessary. Courtroom translation must cost a lot. The BBC have been doing a lot of this kind of thing lately. anyone would think they've slashed their journalism budget.

Growing up in Florida there were always alot of people of an hispanic background,mostly Cuban, and very few spoke English. I thought for a long time that it was shameful that they didn't know how. After speaking to some of them however I learned that it was not about not wanting to it was about the time and money to. Most Immigrants don't have a lot of money and spend most of their time working their but off and just don't have the time. I understand this does not represent all, including Brits abroad.

There is also the isolation that sometimes comes with being a expat, in many cases the local culture is so closed on itself that the only friends they manage to do are also foreigners therefore the oportunities to practice the local language may be near to nil.

My first real English language practice was with people from Austria, although I attended an American university everybody wanted to practice their Spanish with me, or... if they saw me struggling they just switched to Spanish ruining my few chances to practice.

I live in Germany, and although I speak fair German, it is much harder dealing with stuff in German than in english. I have missed out on money I am entitled to, simply because of the difficulty of negotiating the burocracy in another language.
You need 5 years living in a country to get really fluent (not my opinion, but a German tutor that I had lessons with)
Health and financial issues are particularly difficult.
The NHS is supposed to be free at teh point of delivery to UK taxpayers. Not to UK taxpayers who are fluent in English.

UK residents, I mean, but also point out that this woman is in all probablity a taypayer too and deserves a service that she can use!