Of course, Krystal is a bit nervous thinking of her upcoming oral interaction interview… but she is focused for the time being and… rather calm. That might change next week though!

And my blog stats show that someone played my 105 flashcards on prepositions 11 times last night… I has to be Corey!… Who else?…

Today I found an interesting quizz for you to play… actually I had to think carefully before finding the correct answer… what we call in French «faux-amis» are all over the place and it is not always obvious to avoid using a word with its English meaning… I got the correct answers yet I have to admit I wasn’t sure about a couple of questions… I did what often my students do at the PSC written expression test: I guessed!

If, sometimes, I do have problems with some signs in French… there are some in English that are not the best either…

My Aussie friend Phil had a problem with this one… and I do agree with him… even if we know what it means, the wording is weird… what do you think?

While making up your mind on this one, click here to take the test!

Have fun!

Photo credit by Philip Lean, Canberra, Australia

On the weekend I came across something that kind of disturbed me… Originating from any Federal Departments, I would have probably giggled and made fun of their «français boiteux»… but what I read originated from the «bureau des langues officielles» in Montreal. Of course this generic text can be found in the PSC templates, which I assume were created in Ottawa… yet one would think that Francophones located in Montreal would have spotted this text right away (unless they never read what they are actually sending to candidates)!…

When my trainees get their official results, most of the time, they forward me the email they received from the PSC… since I am always eager to know their results, I never read the generic introduction message of this email. Honestly I am not interested in whatever is written… my only concern is: did my student make it?… I made an exception last Saturday, I probably had some spare time since I read the whole thing… Then I had the shock of my life! «Quelle horreur!!!»… I had to read this paragraph more than once to make sure I was not having a bad dream:

VEUILLEZ NE PAS RÉPONDRE À CE COURRIEL VIA VOTRE SYSTÈME DE COURRIEL. VOTRE COURRIEL NE SERA PAS RÉPONDU.

What in the hell is that?!!?… Everything is utterly incorrect in this short paragraph!… It looks like someone scanned the English version of this warning through some Google free translator:

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL VIA YOUR EMAIL SYSTEM. YOUR EMAIL WILL NOT BE ANSWERED.

No one could ever come up with a better literal translation than this one!… Even with time and effort, nothing would beat this paragraph. Maybe it is time for a crash course in French… First of all, «courriel» is the electronic version of «courrier» (mail) in French… it actually stands for the longer version «courrier électronique»… what we have here is a «message électronique», not a «courriel»… usually, when referring to the email system, we say «système de messagerie électronique»… and, grammaticaly, we do not use the passive voice in French for expressions such as I have been told or your email will not be answered… Even my beginners know that!… Am I being a fussy purist?… I really do not think so! I just cannot stand anyone murdering my mother tongue!… Here is what I do with this horrific paragraph:

VEUILLEZ NE PAS RÉPONDRE À CE COURRIEL VIA VOTRE SYSTÈME DE COURRIEL. VOTRE COURRIEL NE SERA PAS RÉPONDU.

Not much left indeed!… To make sure that Francophones who do not happen to be bilingual would understand such a warning, it should read like this:

VEUILLEZ NE PAS RÉPONDRE À CE MESSAGE VIA VOTRE SYSTÈME DE MESSAGERIE ÉLECTRONIQUE PARCE QUE VOUS NE RECEVREZ AUCUNE RÉPONSE.

Et voilà!… Le tour est joué!… Actually, my first reaction was to reply to this email in order to pinpoint the mistakes… then I realized that no one would read it!… L’ironie du sort quoi!… Of course, I could see this as a pathetic joke… and move on… yet I do have a serious problem when I think of all those Anglophones having their second language skills assessed by people from the PSC… If those who claim to be a so-called panel of experts in French cannot even write (or at least review and correct) such a short and simple paragraph according to the French language standards, well… I am scared!… What if their assessment were based upon their own flaws and mistakes?… I have seen enough of those in both their reading comprehension and written expression tests to be worried!… Why would it be different when they are evaluating candidates on their abilities to communicate orally in French?… It is certainly something to ponder upon seriously… Anyone claiming the right of assessing others on their second language abilities should be flawless experts… therefore each time I come across something that tells me otherwise, I do question the present system…

“J’ai toujours rencontré si peu d’esprit autour de moi qu’il a bien fallu que j’utilise le mien”

Paul Léautaud

This morning, I had a short chat on Skype with an English-speaking friend of mine who asked me what was the title of the movie I had seen… A few minutes later, he sent me a link with the movie detailed description. I was kind of puzzled… I had to check twice to make sure it was the same movie I had seen with Alicia. Of course, I told my friend what the movie was really about!… According to this american website, the plot is: A semi-autobiographical about Dolan as a young homosexual at odds with his mother… First of all, the main character is fictive although probably inspired by several stories… Yes, Hubert (the 16 year old main character) is marginal because of his homosexuality yet a typical teenager who is in a love-hatred relationship with his mother. And being gay is not the reason for this ambiguous mother/son relationship… Obviously he accepts his homosexuality and it is not a big deal for his mother either.

It is the story of an often stormy relationship between a teenager and his mother… it is about growing up… it is about that phase between childhood and adulthood… not necessarily the easiest, but not the worst either… it is only a passage rite…

I kind of pondered upon this for a while this afternoon… why is the English description so far away from the French description of the same movie? Would it be due to a bad translation in the subtitles?… Well… although dialogues would be altered by some misinterpretation in English, the images stay the same… right? What we see should be the same, no matter the language we speak… Yet it seems that we see it through different glasses…  If language constructs the way we see the world, this is a good example! Because we communicate differently based on the language we speak, we get different messages… and it is fascinating! It certainly contributes to illustrate and understand what we call the two solitudes in Canada.

On the other hand, Alicia (who is an Anglophone) interpreted the movie the way I did… yet she is bilingual and, last night, she watched the movie with the French side of her brain… I wonder whether she had seen it differently if she had stayed tuned to her English mode…

This reflection led me to the oral interaction test… okay… you probably wonder what is the connection… actually I was thinking about language and culture… For the past two weeks I have been preparing Joyce for her oral test that will be held next Tuesday afternoon… Joyce’s mother tongue is English but she attendend French immersion school and her husband is Francophone… In my book, she is bilingual. She has no problems communicating in French: her comprehension is excellent and when she speaks, her message is as clear as crystal…

Yet she is struggling with the third part of the oral test simulation: the two/three minute presentation followed with hypothetical and opinion questions. Does she make mistakes when she expresses herself in French? Of course she does!… Just like anyone else! I do not know many people who can master two languages…  but, when it comes down to communication, no one is seeking perfection. Well… except the PSC!… My problem with this test is that it does not take into account cultural differences… Joyce is from New-Brunswick… There are many Francophones in this province. We call them the Acadians… They have a very unique way of speaking French and, personally, I do think their language is colourful and filled with local flavours… Joyce was born and raised in New-Brunswick, therefore she speaks French the way Acadians do… Tell me… what is wrong with that?

Last week I suggested that she could practice her conditional and subjunctive (her weak spots) with her husband… His first reaction was: “But… we don’t speak French like this here!”… Precisely! The only answer Joyce could come up with was: “Well… it’s the way they speak in Ottawa!”… Well, no one in the National Capital speaks like that either! If they have their own expressions in Moncton, people in Ottawa have their own also… are they better? Absolutely not!…

Right now I do feel cheap… because I am asking her to let go of her spontaneity in order to speak French according to the standards established by the PPC… Foutaise!!!… Now when we are practicing the presentation part of the test, Joyce doesn’t sound natural and joyful… the way she usually is! Why, in the name of God, are candidates not allowed to just be themselves and speak French according to their personality and cultural background with the expressions they know and use naturally?… Joyce will work in Moncton and chances are that she will speak French with Acadians and not with some scholars from La Sorbonne!… All this nonsense originates from the PPC stubborness to standardize the oral test. They have one model… one pattern… one way to measure candidates’ competence in French… and do I have to mention that this model is far from being perfect? It is fake, superficial and it does not measure anything else than people’s tolerance to the most stressful situation of their working lives!

Hopefully, one day, the PPC so-called panel of experts will realize the importance of cultural differences all across the country and they will allow people to express themselves in the language that is commonly used in their regions… which is still French, but with its specific cultural expressions and differences…

“La soif d’égalité n’est souvent qu’une forme avouable du désir d’avoir des inférieurs et pas de supérieurs”

Gustave Le Bon

A couple of months ago I joined Facebook after having received an invitation from my 11 year old niece… Over the years, I had been invited numerous times but  always had ignored those requests to sign up. Since I am a real sucker when anything involves my niece and cannot refuse her anything, I did join the wonderful world of FB… and I thought I could monitor who her friends were (being a real mother hen, I was kind of skeptical and truly believed she needed to be supervised… in a subtle way of course!)… It did not take long before her brother asked me to become his friend also… I was less concerned about him: he is going on 18 and, from what I see, Facebook is the new way for high schoolers (and mature adults!) to goof around… back in my days, we were doing it on the school grounds (which I think was much more fun since we were physically together!)… what makes me wonder… what do they do during recess in school now? Good question!…

Anyways, though I am not proud of being a Facebook member, I am… for better or worse! Besides my brother’s kids, I only have six friends… and I really do not intend to add more. I have to admit that I like FB for one thing: now that I am connected with my friends and family who live in Chicago, St.Maarten, Portland, Timmins and Senneterre ; we do not have to send each other pics… we only have to log in our FB account and we can see them all… But, other than that, I personally get no benefits from this social network.

Now that I tried to justify my move (did I convince any of you? )… I want to talk about Facebook French version…

A few days before Christmas, my FB account has been arbitrarily and automatically switched to the brand new French version (I am still searching for how to go back to English… and I think I can do it!)… Why? I only can assume that it was decided upon my name and country… I cannot fool anyone, my surname is really French! I guess that, without the Des, this change would have never occurred… because I would then have been Lyne Roberts… unless my first name would have still been questionable… Lynne or Lynn would have convinced the system I was genuinely anglophone! So… add up Canada to Lyne Des Roberts and you have a perfect match for your account to be translated!!!

I will have to ask my cousin Michelle Des Roberts who lives in Portland, Maine whether her account was turned into French or left alone… you see… Michelle does not speak French and barely understands it! At the beginning of the 20th Century, one of the Des Roberts‘ brothers emigrated to the States… there is now quite a large number of Des Roberts  mainly living in Boston, Portland and New Hampshire… and a few others can be found throughout the United States. If my generation and the ones before can still speak French, Michelle’s generation cannot! Yet, because she is located in the States, perhaps the system did not pick her name the way it did in my case.

Saturday, I logged in my account to have a closer look at Facebook French version… at first glance, it seemed okay!… well… only okay!!! Nothing to brag about, that is for sure! As for the IT terminology itself, it is what is used worldwide… not great, but not incorrect either! It is when I started to read the translated fucntions that I realized how bad it was!

I would not be surprised to hear that it went through Google Free Translator (my favourite!)… when a word (or expression) is not translated literaly, it stays in English!… Therefore you have things like these: envoyer un poke à… (send a poke to)… what, in the name of God, is un poke? Poke in French is une poussée, un coup de coude or un coup du bout du doigt… certainly not un poke!!!… marquer cette photo (tag this photo) and John Doe doit approuver ce marquage… What in the hell?

It is impossible for me to give you an exhaustive list of all the flaws because this post would become a book! Here are a few good ones though:

• Se souvenir de moi (remember me)… Only people se souviennent, not computers!
• Informations (information)… What about renseignements? Les informations, in French,  are the news!
• Plus de publicités (more ads)… Sorry but we cannot count publicité in French… and if we want to, we use annonces instead!
• Notifications (notifications)… This is not a word in French! What about using the word messages? Too simple perhaps…
• Est devenu(e) fan de (became a fan of)… I am now speechless!
• Lycée (high school)… My French version of FB is the Canadian one (so I was notified!)… Last time I checked, we still did not have lycées around here! We only have old plain écoles secondaires!

I will never say this often enough: translation is not the mere process of checking words in an English-French dictionary! There are nuances… cultural differences… different humor… what makes me laugh in English rarely makes me laugh once it is translated in French! And vice-versa… Comical movies in English are not funny at all in their French version!

Translating thoughts and ideas in another language takes lots of imagination… and, if poking someone in English does mean something, it does not in French… therefore, sit down and find something else that will ring a bell for Francophones! Of course, it will cost more $$$… because this type of translators do not bill by the word count!…

One would think that a huge corporation such as Facebook would pay more attention to the translation of its site… was it left to the users? If so, I am not surprised with the results… on the other hand, if professionals handled this task… well… they suck big time!

As for me, I will click on the button English US (hopefully it will work!) so I will return to a language I do understand: Plain English!!!

“I do not avoid confusion… I create it!”

Confucius 

What bugs me the most is that it is always a travail fait à moitié… I always end up starting from the beginning, ignoring messages letting me know that I can press 9 to get the service in French. Therefore I am always wasting my time… and probably losing my call priority!

Since I have been living in Ontario, there are only two places I am sure to get a real service in my mother tongue: Revenue Canada (of course most of their offices are located in Shawinigan, QC) and Bell Sympatico… other than that, I was never successful at getting the service they are indeed offering.

I remember, back in 1999, when I transferred my business in Ontario… At the time I did not know if the PST also applied on services, the way it did in Québec. I had called Revenue Ontario to get some information… of course, I had pressed 9 for the service in French. After having waited more than 30 minutes on the line, someone had finally picked up the phone… I can still picture myself telling my story! Actually I had been speaking to a wall… why? Because after a couple of minutes, the lady had cut me off saying she was not able to speak French!… Apparently, there was nobody around at that time to take calls in French… Duh! Okay… no big deal! I am able to speak English!… But… what about those who cannot?

Then, around the same time, I had had to get my Ontario driver license and plates… Only the central bureau on Wakley is connected to an inter-provincial network: useless to say that it is always very busy! If you do not get there before 8 am, chances are you will spend the day waiting (it is actually as bad as a hospital ER). When I had been offered the service in French, I had thought it would be rather quick… indeed, the guy had given me #4… Woo hoo! He had also aked me if I wanted the forms in English or French… “In French of course!”… “Sorry Ma’am, but we don’t carry them!”… “Oh!… so, why did you give me such an option?”… “Because, Ma’am, I have no other choices… it’s our policies!”… Great! Anyways… live with it or die!

I had taken a seat… 10 minutes… 20 minutes… 30 minutes… 40 minutes… 50 minutes… and not one single number for service in French had been called! To make a story short, after inquiries, I was told that the French-speaking employee had called in sick that morning!

Some ten years later, one would think that things somewhat improved… ne serait-ce qu’un peu! Unfortunately, my latest experience told me that Ontario and Ottawa still have a long way to go before they can serve their francophone residents!

Friday, at 3:10 pm, I was booked for a routine test at The Ottawa Hospital… Thursday morning, I decided to postpone it to the end of January. With the OC Transpo strike and the rush hour traffic, I thought I would probably be sitting in my car for hours. There was a number to call on the letter I had received (which was written both in perfect English and French) where it was possible to leave a message…

Of course, I had the option to hear the menu and leave my message in French by pressing 9. Why not?… I was given two choices : “Pour joindre le département de tomographie axiale, appuyez sur le 1… pour joindre le département d’imagerie à résonance magnétique, appuyez sur le 2…” Well… I was not booked either for a CAT SCAN or a MRI! I was expecting many more options on the menu… Nope! What was I supposed to do? Leave a message for a department where I had no appointment? Anyone hearing my name would delete my message because I was not on their appointment list…

I re-dialed the number and ignored the invitation to get the menu in French this time… Surprise! I was given more than eight options in English versus two in French! And, #5 was exactly the department I was looking for… a little annoyed I chose to leave my message in French. I admit it was not very nice of me… because I have to say that The Ottawa Hospital staff is great and they do whatever they can to accomodate you. Yet, I could not help it!… Ten minutes later, a woman struggling with French called me back… then I decided to take her out of her misery right away by switching to English (to her great relief), it was not her fault after all! She was very nice and she gave me the day and the time I asked for…

I certainly do not intend to attack these people… I know they do their best with what they have! The problem is that all those places do not have enough bilingual employees on the front line! Yet they insist on offering their clientele service in French when they actually cannot!… All it does is to waste my time and irritate me. I am bilingual and, although there are times I would prefer to express myself in French, I do not make a fuss if no one can speak my language… I live in an alledged bilingual country, but I know better!… Outside Québec, I cannot expect too much… It was my decision ten years ago to move to Ontario: nobody forced me… and even if I have the right to be served in French on paper, reality is quite different. Actually I do not mind…

But I do mind when I am told I can get such service and, then, I have to repeat the process in English because I hit a dead-end in French… After a while, it becomes very frustrating. In other words, DO NOT offer me a service you cannot deliver!… Or you do it properly all the way… or you do not! If I am given the choice between bad service in French or good service in English, I will not hesitate one second!… It is when being bilingual comes very handy!

“Sur le champ des principes, il n’y a pas de place pour la négociation.”

Lucien Bouchard

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