Do your official forms come in multiple languages?
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (342489)
Rockingham, Australia
September 3, 2018 9:42pm CST
The photo has nothing to do with the discussion. It’s one of our wildflowers.
In Australia, once you get to somewhere around 70, you get a letter from the Australian Government National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, asking if you’d like to participate in a test that detects bowel cancer. I’ve done the test once and now it seems it’s time I did another one.
You are sent a pack with precise instructions on what to do so you do what it says and send the pack back to them for testing.
However the interesting thing is that, on the back of the letter is a summary of the information in a number of other languages, twenty-two to be precise. I guess these cover most of the languages spoken in our multi-cultural society.
In case you are interested the languages are: Arabic, Assyrian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Croatian, Greek, Hazaragi, Hindi, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Macedonian, Nepalese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese.
Do your official documents come in multiple languages?
22 people like this
26 responses
@marguicha (224032)
• Chile
4 Sep 18
Our official documents are only in Spanish. Sometimes in the south of Chile, there are some documents that are also in Mapudungun, the language of the natives.
5 people like this
@toniganzon (72553)
• Philippines
4 Sep 18
Our official documents only come in English. It happens to be our official language. Though old documents like very old land titles are still in Spanish as it used to be our official language. We call them the Spanish title.
4 people like this
@toniganzon (72553)
• Philippines
4 Sep 18
@JudyEv Oh yes. There are 8 major dialects.
3 people like this
@JudyEv (342489)
• Rockingham, Australia
4 Sep 18
@toniganzon That is quite a number.
3 people like this
@LadyDuck (472258)
• Switzerland
4 Sep 18
All official documents are in the 4 official Swiss languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Most of the instruction manuals of the products sold in Europe come in dozens of languages, written in so small characters that you can barely read them.
3 people like this
@andriaperry (117270)
• Anniston, Alabama
4 Sep 18
Yes we have English, Spanish, French and Chinese on most of the instructions.
I love that flower!
4 people like this
@hereandthere (45645)
• Philippines
4 Sep 18
wow, that's a lot. so it depends on which us state you live?
2 people like this
@andriaperry (117270)
• Anniston, Alabama
4 Sep 18
@hereandthere I think its the whole USA.
3 people like this
@snowy22315 (182777)
• United States
4 Sep 18
It depends on what it is. In most cases forms are in English and Spanish..but sometimes there might be more, and it is especially common in urban areas that have more speakers from other languages.
3 people like this
@allknowing (138321)
• India
5 Sep 18
That is an indication the world lives in Australia. (lol)
Pretty wild flowers.Looks like a paiting I like the colour Do you know its name?
2 people like this
@wolfgirl569 (108824)
• Marion, Ohio
4 Sep 18
I wish anything here was only in english a lot of times. It just adds paperwork that I have to look through to make sure I did not miss anything
3 people like this
@just4him (317459)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
4 Sep 18
Yes, they do. I don't pay attention to what languages they are, other than the basic, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. I think Hmong is among them since we have a large Hmong community in the US. I know the page is two-sided with all the languages. I think you have some we don't.
3 people like this
@JohnRoberts (109846)
• Los Angeles, California
4 Sep 18
English and Spanish here.
3 people like this
@anya12adwi (10056)
• India
4 Sep 18
No it comes in one language and that is english.. or hindi.. or odia.. but only one language you will see over here..
2 people like this
@JudyEv (342489)
• Rockingham, Australia
5 Sep 18
@anya12adwi Choosing one language is very sensible but it's good that people have the option to use their local dialect.
1 person likes this
@anya12adwi (10056)
• India
5 Sep 18
@JudyEv Yes, it is said that we have 700 languages.. So better to have all official documents in one language and that is english.. But if people do wish, they can bring those documents in their local language
1 person likes this
@hereandthere (45645)
• Philippines
4 Sep 18
it's like a mini-united nations. hazaragi is new to me.
2 people like this
@Daljinder (23236)
• Bangalore, India
4 Sep 18
That would be a travesty if we had all the languages spoken in our country on the official documents. India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. Imagine that!
That is why, we have two official languages for official purposes as a Union except for the state of Tamil Nadu which are English and Hindi. And we have no National language!
2 people like this
@acelawrites (19272)
• Philippines
4 Sep 18
Yes, sometimes Filipino our local dialect, and English, but most of the times it is English only.
2 people like this
@ANAYAtair (128)
•
4 Sep 18
Yes.. They do!!because diverse people speaking different languages reside in my place!!
2 people like this
