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

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

]]> http://ladamedragon.com/blog/i-wonder-why-bother/feed 1 http://ladamedragon.com/blog/beware-of-a-falling-image http://ladamedragon.com/blog/beware-of-a-falling-image#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:43:24 +0000 Lyne Des Roberts http://ladamedragon.com/blog/?p=1375 It is early Wednesday morning and… it is still snowing on the National Capital! Should I remind you that it is not officially winter yet?… Top that with the OC Transpo strike and you have the perfect icing on the cake!… What I love about my job is that I can modify my schedule… therefore, at 7:00 am, I called James to let him know I would see him this afternoon instead. By then, snow should have ended and there will be no traffic left on the roads. Brilliant!!!

Since I cannot just stay home doing nothing, I thought it would be a good idea to use this spare time to write a post… When Joseph, my long time student, finally decided to go ahead with his web site and blog; I was thrilled! He had been sitting on this project for almost a year… Bilingual, although not perfect in French writing, he offers his services in both English and French. For that reason, he wanted his blog/site to be in both languages… quite a risky business indeed! Why? Because it means your site has to be flawless… Some people would argue that, given the poor quality of French that we see around here, there is no need for overdoing it since most readers would probably not even notice grammar, structure or spelling mistakes… Well, I do! And I am convinced I am not the only one!

I am very demanding when I am looking for a service… and I will automatically discard a company based on its flyers or ads that suck either in English or French! And it goes for snowblowing contractors as well… In my mind, anyone who cannot check what they wrote are not worth my attention! When companies (and even the governement) deliver badly written messages, I just can imagine the poor quality of either their products or their services… I might be wrong though… I might miss out on an excellent service provider just because of a lousy web site or a flyer riddled with mistakes! Yet… for me, it is a red flag!… And, to some extent, an insult!

Unless you are a language expert, you do not master it, consequently you cannot just write something and think it is perfect… most people make mistakes writing in their mother tongue… and it is okay because they are no experts!… It becomes even trickier when they do translate their texts themselves using some questionable tools such as Google translators! Of course, it is free and very appealing to small companies (and probably a few big ones too!)… Hiring a translator and/or an editor might be costly, yet it is an investment that is worth every penny spent! You may have the most visually stunning site or flyer but, if the content stinks, chances are that visitors will leave right away and never come back… and your flyers will go directly from mail boxes to recycle bins!

Flawless texts are one of the crucial keys to success… it links to your image as professionals… would you go to a first meeting with a client in your pj’s? I do not think so! What you write is the door potential clients go through before they get to meet you in person… and I am convinced you do not want to blow it, right?

Joseph is an expert in communications and a very professional man… He wanted a blog/site that would reflect both, his professionalism and his personality. Therefore he would not take any chances regarding his texts in French… Fortunately, I am around and I was more than delighted to help him by reviewing and editing his texts to make sure everything would be perfect once his site would be launched on line. Actually, what he had written on his own was almost perfect except for the misuse of prepositions (la bête noire de tout francophone!)… I only had to correct those small mistakes (yet annoying!) and replace a few expressions with some that would ring a bell for French-speaking people…

Last week, his blog/site was officially launched and he has a top notch product!… Simply because he paid attention to the quality of his writing, knowing that it was very important to show a professional image that would grab readers and potential clients’ attention! And… useless to mention that I am very proud of him and, whenever he will need my help, I will be there to give him a hand!…

My point is… if you are contemplating the idea of having a bilingual site, make sure that all your texts (in both languages) go through thorough reviewing and screening before it goes on line… Yes, it will cost you money! But… it will eventually pay off!… And if you do not… well…

Do you really want your site to look like this?

Une gracieuseté de «GOOGLE TRANSLATOR»!...

Then… think twice…

“On ne guérit pas les plaies en les léchant avec une langue de bois.”

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing

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