Should we spend 100m + on translation services?
By gary236
@gary236 (83)
December 15, 2006 1:38pm CST
I was amazed at a BBC Newsnight report that highlighted the excessive amounts of money being spent on translating services into English for people in this country who refuse to speak English. This is a disgrace - if you come to the UK or any country, one should be able to speak the language of that country already and if not should learn immediately. In Germany, I know they have to do 300 hours German - thats about the same as a school pupil's entire German course from Year 8 to A2 level. It is about time we stopped throwing money away when there are people with far more pressing needs and gave the taxpayer value for money.
1 person likes this
3 responses
@achyuta (2851)
• United States
16 Dec 06
I agree with you. Be a roman while at rome is an old adage. But instead of spending on translations, the govt should instead spend on educating these immigrants in english. The benefit of such an exercise will be that the spending will be for a certain period of time not for ever.
@snowflake5 (1579)
• United States
15 Dec 06
But do you think it's true that they actually "refuse" to speak English?
I would imagine that it's impossible not to learn some English if you live in Britain as you'd be hard pushed to read street signs, buy things at the supermarket, tell your doctor your symptoms etc - there's no translation service for any of these things.
Some people are able to speak English (they've picked it up by ear), but cannot read it.
France is seeing a similar thing regarding Brits who move there. So many can't read or write French, they get into a pickle filling out their tax forms and dealing with contracts and French law. The French government has actually set up a bureau in London to help Brits moving to France - with brochures all printed with an English translation - their reasoning is that the cost of the bureau and the translation is less than dealing with Brits in a pickle because they can't communicate.
