I received this email today.
Now we at Bystander Towers know that it's terribly important to be fair to all court users by conducting matters in a language that they understand, and we are fully aware of just how sensitive an issue this is for some people, but..........
At a time when the justice system is desperately short of cash, courtrooms are closed for lack of legal advisers, maintenance is at a standstill, legal aid is cut and cut again leaving many people adrift in the law's complexities, is this really a top priority to spend money on? Isn't austerity a government priority? There are only a tiny number of truly monoglot Welsh speakers. Is it too much to ask that we postpone these hugely expensive initiatives until we have a few more quid in the kitty?
It's the same as saying that a lot of French people speak English so why dont they, just for now, agree to deal with the justice system in their second language. Any problems for justice there?
ReplyDeleteA Welsh JP
1. But NOMS aren't proposing a French language service.
Delete2. For most of the scroates in London, anything near correct English is a second language, let alone legal English.
3. London and the Southeast is the economic engine that is driving this country as best it can. There's about half as many Welsh in total than inhabitants of Greater London. Why can't the welsh language mavens provide interpreters when necessary, and why is this a NOMS issue that will just drive up costs for wasted activities by mediocre bureaucrats with sinecures ?
4. The Welsh should understand that being able to speak English is a de facto advantage in this country.
According to the 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey
Deletehttp://www2.ku.edu/~idrh/cgi-bin/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Welsh-Survey-Report-041.pdf
only 21.7% of Welsh people spoke Welsh in 2004. Of those, only 57% (315,000) were fluent.
It would probably be reasonable to assume that pretty much everyone is fluent in their first language. So that's a maximum of 315,000 people whose first language is Welsh - out of an estimated UK population of 6.1 million - before you take into account people in that 315,000 whose first language is English, but are bilingual and speak fluent Welsh as well.
So that would be true if only 12.37% (being 21.7% x 57%) of French people spoke French as their first language.
I agree that it's not ideal, but see the Bystander Team's comments re there not being an awful lot of spare cash at the moment.
Whoops. Uk population of 63.1 million!
DeleteWould be prepared to bet there's more than 315,000 speaking primarily other languages such as Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu.
DeleteEach of the French, Bengali, Hindi or Urdu speakers are entitled to interpretation in their main language.
DeleteThe reflex to abandon a minority language because money is tight has often been used as an excuse by those centralisers who would like to be in control of everything (see France and the Bretons, Basques, Corsicans et al). One sacrifices a language at one's peril.
By the sort of rationale set out by some, the UN, EU and every other international body should work only in English too, because more people speak it than any other language (in fact, more people probably speak English in Russia than some of the languages of the Federation).
I hope the monoglots don't carry the day...
For how many Welsh people is Welsh their first language and English such a poor second that they cannot understand it sufficiently for it to be used in court?
ReplyDeleteYou could count them on the fingers of one hand.
DeleteI know a number of high-up Welsh 'speakers' (by which I mean those who bring their kids up to speak Welsh as a first language) and they all, whilst applauding the aspiration behind this initiative, have poured scorn on its necessity.
"They should fix the bloody employment problem first before they tinker with their empires" was the caustic comment of one.
_You_ may also say that the creation of a autonomous Welsh jurisdiction, separated from England after almost five centuries, is also an improvidence and an indulgence at the present time (it will, of course, be at least bilingual, if not multi-lingual - think Latin and Law French etc.) - but it is happening now and will be completed to some degree in the near future.
ReplyDelete_I_ am not bothered with the principle of Welsh legal devolution (which is best discussed elsewhere) but remember that some of the most important and lasting legal reforms of the last century in the UK were made during the Slump of the mid-Twenties to mid-Thirties.
The Welsh are busy building invisible barriers: making Welsh language necessary/desirable for public sector jobs in practice reserves them for Welsh "nationals". Clever short-term but I wonder what it will mean for the quality of staff over time.
Deleteits all shite, shite, shite!!
ReplyDeleteWhilst we have people waiting for operations to save their life, drugs to ease pain and stop the relentless onslaught of disase I can think of a 101 things the money could be better spent on.
(sorry for the industrial language but this really is shite!)
Recommend respond to the consultation. There's a template that is easy to use, and it can be mailed or e-mailed in.
DeleteI live in SE Wales & work in the public sector. The resources invested in trying to revive the rotting corpse of the Welsh language would make a nun swear.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of Welsh is simple - those who want to speak it and maintain it are perfectly at liberty to do so, there's no need to spend inordinate amounts of money subsiding such an initiative.
As an example I would suggest requesting from Welsh local authorities (under FOI if necessary) the amount of hits on the English language and Welsh language versions of their website. It will give you a fair idea of the take up, and that's before taking into account the fact that a lot of the Welsh Language hits are from website staff checking it's there and the local Welsh diehards checking the grammar is correct.
Any chance of getting 'Geordie' translated while we're on :)
ReplyDeleteHaway man, Anonymous man, Anonymous!
Deleteie No
Is it too much to ask that we postpone these hugely expensive initiatives until we have a few more quid in the kitty?
ReplyDeleteYes it is to much to ask, but then, it's not their money is it.
John Gibson
I heard a rumour once that the court service in Wales were desperate for a Welsh speaking district judge (civil), because they didn't have any, but couldn't recruit one, so some enterprising chap from England who had failed a couple of recruitment exercises at home just went to nightschool, learned Welsh to conversational standard, applied and got the job. I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds plausible to me.
ReplyDeleteThe hideously-expensive infusion of public money in to propping up the Welsh language is an excellent example of 'boom times' measures enacted at a time when money was perceived to be freely available. It's also indicative of what unrepresentative minority pressure groups can achieve when the majority isn't prepared to stand up to their politically-correct dogma. Let Wales have all the Welsh language subsidies and financial crutches that it likes, but let the cost lie solely with those demanding it - the Welsh.
ReplyDeleteIn the hypothetical example of an offender who only spoke Welsh (seriously, people?!), tough. Within England, Scotland and NI, speak English or use an interpreter, or don't commit offences, because we shouldn't be pandering to your insularity at the expense of blameless taxpayers.
An English magistrate
You hero.
Delete"Hugely expensive"? But the consultation paper states that "This paper does not contain an Impact Assessment as the proposals in this paper are inward facing and are unlikely to lead to additional costs or savings for businesses, civil society or the public sector." Now the NOMS is part of the public sector. So it seems there won't be any additional costs and you are worrying about nothing :)
ReplyDeleteMore realisiticlly, the authors are trying to finesse the the 3rd consulation criteria which requires clarity about "expected costs and benefits of the proposals". They invite comments on this but by the time they get those the consulation has ended and they can move on.
I hve complained about the disingenuous claim and the absence of the costs to the address on page 60 of the document.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteQuote "The fact that we have a number of Welsh speakers who are not in Welsh prisons complicates matters. "
ReplyDeleteThink of the benefits for UK if, upon conviction - and for perfectly sound reasons of their "Human Rights"- we relocated ALL prisoners to serve their sentences in countries where their 'preferred language' is the ethnic and cultural norm?
Quote "The fact that we have a number of Welsh speakers who are not in Welsh prisons complicates matters. "
ReplyDeleteWhilst transferring all Welsh speakers to prisons would certainly eliminate the need for all those bilingual signs out in public, I'm not sure that that's quite what was intended.
Ireland has had this for a long time. Expensive and damaging. I would have been a barrister in practice were it not for the barrier that existed there.
ReplyDeleteI could have followed the example of Nigerian students, who never subsequently practiced, paying for lessons from the examiner ..... but I digress, stupidity never promotes corruption....
In many areas of North and Mid Wales welsh is the first language and many such speakers find it hard to articulate in English particularly at times of stress and anxiety. Whilst not wanting all Welsh speakers to be transferred to prison language issues can be complicated west of Offa's Dyke.
ReplyDeleteWhy not just have a Welsh interpreter then?
ReplyDeleteIt's not unusual to lose ones command of the English language when under the stress of having been detected committing an offense.
ReplyDeleteOnly bona fide visitors to the UK should have the benefit of free court translation to/from English - natives and residents should be deemed to know the language in which the laws are actually written, or provide their own translation.
You may well think that, but it would be illegal - Human Rights Act.
ReplyDeleteI worked on the Magistrates Courts (Libra) Computer System for some time, during which we were asked to implement a second language (Welsh) into the system to remove the need to manually translate summonses etc. The cost of this project reached an estimated £444 million. In the six months leading up to dual language deployment, the cost of Welsh Language manual translations reached a dizzying £425 for 21 translations. All this information is available due to Jenny Willot raising the issue during Prime Ministers Questions some time in 2009.
ReplyDelete