Migrants lost in Translation
I was not at all surprised to read this article: Councils spend £50m a year translating documents no-one reads Just look a this: "Haringey translated into Albanian, Kurdish and Somali a leaflet for recommending council staff for internal awards. Only 12 people ever viewed the documents." It reads as though this leaflet is for council staff. If council staff cannot read English, then surely they should not be employed by the council at all. What an utter waste of money! Whilst people might speak a language, it does not always mean that they are able to read the language just as well. Also, the councils assume that people have free access to computers and internet. As this is not the case, the headline here is also misleading (let's call a spade a spade). While I am not terribly fond of Ms Hazel Blears her advice to councils to "think twice before translating documents" makes sense. This is a version of my letter sent to Times (the newspaper) and published on 13t