Bilingual and Multilingual Outreach lessons Learned from A Canadian Perspective

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Bilingual and Multilingual Outreach lessons
Learned from A Canadian Perspective

• Sharon Jeffers
• Environnement Canada/Environment Canada

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My four outreach questions

• Did the public receive it?
• Did the public understand it?
• Did the public do anything differently because of
  it?
• If the answer to any or all of the above
  questions is no, what did we do about it?

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Linguistic profile of Canada

• 17.5 million anglophones (english is their mother
  tongue)
• 6.8 million francophones (french is their mother
  tongue)
• 5.3 million allophones
• The mother tongue of 1 in 6 Canadians is neither
  english nor french

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Toronto, the Tower of Babel Canadian style

• Population of 4,682,897
• 2,684,195 anglophones
• 57,490 francophones
• 1,898,465 allophones
• The mother tongue of 4 in 10 Torontonians is
  neither english nor french

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My four questions revisited

• Did the public receive it?
• Did the public understand it?
• Did the public do anything differently because of
  it?
• If the answer to any or all of the above
  questions is no, what did we do about it?

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Did the public receive it?

• Mother tongue neither english nor french?
• First choice for receiving information is usually
  our mother tongue
• Mass media not likely to help here
• 3rd language radio and TV stations
• Community or cultural organisations
• Through the schools, ie children learn it in
  school and bring the information home to their
  families

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Did the public understand it?

• TRANSLATION
• TRANSLATION
• TRANSLATION

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Translation, translation, translation

• Come share your experiences and learn about more
  effective ways to ensure the public has timely,
  accurate air quality information to make choices
  about how to protect their health.

• Venez la part vos expériences et apprenez environ
  des manières plus efficaces d'assurer le public a
  la qualité opportune et précise d'air
  l'information pour faire des choix au sujet de la
  façon protéger leur santé.

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Translation, translation, translation

• Come share your experiences and learn about more
  effective ways to ensure the public has timely,
  accurate air quality information to make choices
  about how to protect their health.

• Come share your experiments and learn butt more
  effective ways to public ensure the has timely,
  accurate air quality information to make choices
  butt how to protect to their health.

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Did the public understand it?

• A good translation is necessary but not
  sufficient because.
• It is not just about the language
• Differences in survey results from Québec
• Does language define culture, or culture define
  language?
• No word for jay walking in french
• Advertising campaigns.

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Did the public understand it?

• From a risk communication viewpoint are
  allophones more at risk?

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• Avertissements météo officiels d'Environnement
  Canada
• Alertes/avertissements
• Îles-de-la-Madeleine15h55 HNA le mercredi 25
  janvier 2006un avertissement de blizzard pour
  Îles-de-la-Madeleine est maintenuLe blizzard
  débutera cette nuit et persistera jeudi.Ceci
  est un avertissement indiquant que du blizzard
  avec une visibilité presque nulle est prévu sur
  ces régions. Veuillez surveiller les conditions
  météorologiques...Et les mises à jour de
  bulletin.

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Did the public do anything differently because of
it

• Already working at the community level just to
  address the language issue
• Social diffusion
• Use car less versus having a smaller car

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If answer to any of first three questions is no,
what did we do about it?

• Need some form of measuring the effectiveness of
  what you are doing to be able to answer this
  question
• Need to identify if the problem is due to
  language
• This is not a simple thing to do, cut yourself
  some slack
• If effectiveness of actions are high due to
  multi-lingual format, usually need to demonstrate
  this to get future funding

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To have another language is to possess a second
soul. Charlemagne

• Dankie/ Shukran/ Grazias/ Merci/
• Meda wo ase/ Akeva/ Gràcies/
• Kinanâskomitinawaw/ tak/ Dank u/
• Ogiwadong/ Danke/ Efcharisto
• Arigato/ Asanteni/ nandri/
• Thank You.