“On Monday, the Radio-Canada website ran a story criticizing the practice, arguing many of the automatic translations were of poor quality and that RCMP divisions elsewhere in the country offer instant official translations.”

I’ve pointed out before that if you want to communicate well, you need a human translator. This is even more true on a website than elsewhere. Afterall, once you have made available the machine translation into umpteen languages, how do you know if it simply causes bemusement for foreign language readers. Or even worse, hilarity. The Mounties are now looking into hiring a human translator.

It seems when it comes to French translation, « Vous en avez pour votre argent » – you get what you pay for.

The French government is keen to replace currently used anglicisms for 21st century phenomena with French-sounding words. This week saw the results of a competition open to schoolchildren and students to do just that.

Up for grabs was finding a French phrase for “le buzz”, “le tuning”, “le newsletter”, “le talk” as in “talk radio” and “le chat” as in an internet chatroom.

In a previous blog article, I wondered how far we should “defend” a language, commenting “language is a living thing, it grows and borrows quite naturally. English itself is littered with words borrowed from other languages and continues to adopt them.”

Equally, one can understand some people’s aversion to such linguistic “anglophone imperialism”. Certainly it would be wrong to see this as an attempt by a stuffy establishment to stiffle naturally development of language. Afterall one of the competition’s judges is MC Solaar, the internationally renown rapper and creator of the important mid-90s album “Prose Combat”. Ironically this brought francophone rap to the attention of many in the English-speaking world for the first time.

The Independent also points out the judges decided that “buzz” should be “ramdam”, an Arab term for the cacophony when fasting ends at nightfall during the Ramadam religious festival. Talk radio got given the phrase “débat” while the winning replacement for newsletter was “infolettre”.

It will be interesting to see which of the new phrases catch on. Whatever their fate, it is clear that this is a debate that will continue to effect languages in this globalised world.

The news that both economies have emerged from recession was welcome, leading French economy minister Christine Lagarde to comment “These are obviously very positive numbers, which have surprised us and made us quite happy.”

The front page of last Friday’s City A.M. also adopted a positive tone, stating “European pair lead recovery”, hinting at a view of a wider recovery across the Eurozone.

Less heralded was the news that Portuguese-speaking Brazil is also now no longer in recession having grown by 1.5% in the second quarter. Along with growth from China and Japan, this means that six of the world’s top 10 economies are now out of recession.

Meanwhile in the UK, the picture seems more bleak. Discussing the outlook and success of Quantitative Easing in his eclectic but always insightful and intelligent blog, Newsnight’s Paul Mason says:

“Even with 0.5% interest rates right through to 2011 and the full £175bn still in circulation until then, the Bank of England is predicting inflation will undershoot the 2% target for CPI. That means we should expect interest rates to be low for at least that long. It also signifies the recovery is going to be pretty appalling: weak and fragile.”

So much for the economics, what does this have to do with translation? Apart from professional translation being effected by the wider economy, I’ve argued before on this blog that translation can be part of a business survival strategy and that the global recession is not playing out evenly.

As Business Secretary Lord Mandelson points out:
“Different economies will show different patterns of behaviour. But the key point is all these economies rely on each other; 55 to 56% of our trade is with the rest of Europe. So when [they are] recovering that is good news for our manufacturers and our exports here.”

The French or German economy may not be booming but if they are pulling ahead of the British, some businesses – not least SMEs – may well wish to revisit the idea of translating a product brochure into French, or translating their website into German. This could not only open up new markets for them, but mean busy times ahead for those of us in the professional translation business!

This combination of languages opens any document or product up to a wide range of potential users. Turning to the strangely ever-useful CIA World Factbook, some plain economic facts bring this home all too clearly. Germany alone is the world’s 5th largest economy with an estimated 2008 GDP of US$ 2.8 trillion, more than a quarter greater than the UK’s equivalent output. France, Italy and Spain are 8th, 10th and 12th respectively on the same scale.

The numbers are even more staggering, with a combined GDP of about that of the United States, once you add in some of the other countries and regions where these are primary native languages – Austria, Mexico, Argentina, French-speaking Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, Venezuela, the list goes on and on. There are also large numbers of people around the world who speak one of the FIGS languages as a foreign or second language.

As the FIGS languages use the Roman alphabet, they are relatively straightforward to use in a range of typefaces and on the web. This, combined with their large audience, makes these languages a popular choice especially when considering translation for a west European market. Many companies and organisations wanting to expand their reach are making use of FIGS translation and localisation services for their products, websites and documents.

After all, whether you are trying to win someone’s business or convince them of your point of view, there is no substitute for a stylish, well written translation in their native language. Everyone should give a fig about that!