Supposedly Kriol signage at Rapid Creek, Darwin

When I shared this Kriol sign on Facebook as an example of a bad Kriol translation, a first language Kriol speaker commented:

Im nomo Kriol garjinga, bambai aibina sabi. [It’s not Kriol for goodness sake, otherwise I would’ve understood it.]

My thoughts exactly. And also the thoughts of every other Kriol speaker I know who has seen it.

Poorly translated signage isn’t uncommon. Everyone is familiar with the hilarity of Engrish. But when translation is just a commercial novelty, it doesn’t matter too much. However, when government departments seek out translation services, you can assume that it is for an important reason. And when that goes wrong, it is more serious and more embarrassing. My favourite example of this is an English sign emailed off to be translated into Welsh. The resultant sign features an ‘Out Of Office’ auto-reply message in Welsh!

The Welsh message on this road sign translates as “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

Kriol, as the most widely spoken language in the Northern Territory after English, is one of the main languages that people in the Top End seek out translation services for. There are challenges to providing translation services in Kriol. Firstly, while Kriol has a standard spelling system – courtesy mostly of the Bible translation work – it is not widely known (and not taught in any schools). Secondly, Kriol does vary from place to place so spellings are often altered to reflect localised pronunciations. Thirdly, translation is not something that can be done by anyone who knows two languages. It is a professional skill that requires training and experience before it can be done well.

While well-translated Kriol signs can be found, the sign recently put up by the Department of Primary Industries near Rapid Creek in Darwin is not one of those.

Well-written bilingual signage as you enter Barunga community

It doesn’t take a linguist to note the obvious spelling inconsistencies. Some words are spelled in Kriol such as krik (creek), kreb (crab) and masul (mussel). A few are Kriol-looking words with English spelling influences, like eatem (in Kriol spelling: idim) and lunga (meaning “in/at/on/to”, usually spelled langa). And the rest is in ordinary English spelling. Given the mixed-up spelling systems used, an obvious question should be: what language is this sign supposed to be in?

But the bigger issue is that it actually doesn’t make sense. At least not to any Kriol speakers I know (and I know a lot).

Two phrases are particularly nonsensical. Wadrim trabul (presumably derived from ‘water-im trouble’) is not a thing that makes any sense to me and nothing I would ever say if I was on an interpreting job.

The weirder one is …lunga being looked at… La or langa (their ‘lunga’) is a preposition locating something in space, usually translating as “in/at/on/to” in English. So the phrase translates to something like … ‘at being looked at’? Je suis confused. On top of that, the phrase ‘being looked at’ is not a structure you’d find in Kriol so I don’t know what it is doing there.

Another example of a well-translated English-Kriol sign

Sadly, despite the commendable gesture to provide signage in Kriol, this result is well below par. The apparent goal of the sign – to communicate a message in Kriol – has not been achieved.

When I first saw this sign being shared on Facebook, I immediately questioned its quality, as did others. All Kriol-speaking contacts – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – were equally confused by it (Numu gud wan dunja dat sign braja – “that’s not a good sign, brother” – wrote a Kriol-speaking mate from Ngukurr in imperfectly spelled but perfectly understandable Kriol).

So, in an effort to actually be helpful, I called the number on the sign to let the department know that their sign is poorly made. The response from the Department of Primary Industries was surprising. Despite my professional advice that it is poorly made, they are standing by it. They told me the translation was done by Aboriginal Broadcasting and placed importance on the fact that it was done by Aboriginal people. Whether they have produced a translation that is actually communicatively useful seems to be a secondary concern. I tried to point out some of the above – that the inconsistent spelling is a clue to it being a poor translation and that all Kriol speakers I know who have seen it find it poor – but it made no difference.

English only version of questionably translated sign at Rapid Creek, Darwin

This is all a bit of an unfortunate shemozzle. It is disappointing that Aboriginal Broadcasting has apparently delivered poor quality language services and disappointing that the Department of Primary Industries were apparently not interested in addressing the poor work they had commissioned.

The message here is, find someone who has skills and experience in translation, not just someone who can take your money and do an efficient-but-ultimately-poor job. And yes, the provision of quality translation services in Aboriginal languages is difficult and may take longer than you expect, but if you try a bit harder, you can make it work.

Someone on Facebook posted the English version of the sign, and it took me about one minute to translate it into something that would make much more sense to a Kriol speaker:

La Mei en Jun, mela testimbat dijan woda bla meiksho im klinwan en seifwan. Nomo idim eni fish, kreb o masul, dumaji im maitbi nogud.

***

An extended version of this post was first published on that munanga linguist.

If you want to learn more about Kriol, you might find this explainer on the Conversation useful.

Gunbalanya School in West Arnhem Land (Source: abc.net.au)

Last week, the results of the 2012 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) were published. As has been the case since NAPLAN was first introduced in Australia in 2008, the Northern Territory (NT) has, once again, underperformed dramatically. More than 30% of Year 3 students in the Territory perform below the national minimum standard in Reading, Writing, Spelling and Numeracy. For Grammar and Punctuation the number of NT students performing below the national minimum standard is close to 40%. Across Australia as a whole, these numbers are between 5-7%.

Around 40% of students enrolled in NT schools are indigenous. Across Australia as a whole, that number is 4%.

Putting two and two together, it won’t be long before we’ll see yet another highly politicised debate about aboriginal education. Conservatives will blame ‘underperforming schools’ and progressives will blame ‘systemic socio-economic disadvantage.’ As usual, both sides will be right and wrong in their own ways and after a while the failure of aboriginal education in this country will be shelved as too intractable for yet another year.

Meanwhile, few will stop to consider that NAPLAN doesn’t actually tell us anything about literacy and numeracy achievements in remote NT schools because NAPLAN is a test designed and standardized for first language speakers of English while English is a second language (ESL) across remote NT locations.

Those who do recognize the fact that aboriginal children are being tested in an additional language on a test designed for first language speakers usually dismiss that problem as minor, as, for instance, Indigenous Education 2012 does. The authors of that report argue that language is not an issue because it is not an issue for migrant children for whom English also constitutes an additional language. Indeed, the difference between migrant ESL test takers and first language test takers seems to be only 1 or 2 percentage points on average, with many ESL students outperforming their mother tongue peers.

A recent article in the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics explores the fallacies of the argument that language does not matter in low literacy and numeracy achievements in the NT. The authors, Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and Deborah Loakes, argue that there are a number of linguistic challenges faced by aboriginal students in remote locations when it comes to literacy and numeracy assessment in English.

First, most ESL kids in cities grow up in suburbs where English is the language of wider communication. School is thus rarely the only domain where they are exposed to English. This is different in remote communities: English is often exclusive to the school.

Second, most migrants come from literate backgrounds where education is highly valued. This is usually not the case in remote indigenous communities.

Third, the problems inherent in speaking two clearly distinct languages are much easier to recognize and to address than the problems inherent in speaking a different language that is not recognized as such. While aboriginal languages have become relatively rare, most indigenous people in remote locations now speak Kriol. Creoles spoken in Australia differ widely but most have English as the lexifier language and are structurally based in an indigenous language. Australian creoles thus often sound like English but may, for example, not have subject-verb agreement nor distinguish singular and plural. When examining Year 3 NAPLAN sample tests, the researchers identified many linguistic problems that would have made the test misleading to a Kriol speaker.

As an example they examine the spelling test item: “We jumpt on the trampoline.” Test takers have to correct the underlined item. Leaving aside the fact that presenting an incorrect item to a learner is highly problematic in itself, test takers would need to identify that “jumpt” is in the past tense and that the final [t] sound is therefore graphically represented as <ed>. However, past tense in Australian creoles would usually be realized as bin jamp. This spelling item is thus testing grammatical knowledge that Kriol speakers are unlikely to have.

The problem is compounded by the fact that ear infections are extremely high in remote indigenous communities and about 70% of all children there are affected by some form of hearing loss. Final stops such as [t] are extremely difficult to hear with high frequency hearing loss.

The problem is also compounded by the fact that the reading passages in the test are littered with cultural concepts quite alien to the experience of children in remote Australia. The sample tests examined by Wigglesworth, Simpson and Loakes are populated by cinemas, paperboys, picket fences, letter boxes and parking meters – none of which exist in remote communities.

In sum, the researchers demonstrate that the NAPLAN test is linguistically and culturally problematic for creole-speaking children in remote communities. A standardized test designed for first-language speakers of English will always fail second-language speakers who are not even recognized as such.

In contrast to all the big problems bedevilling aboriginal education in this country, the language problem is actually relatively easy to fix: bilingual education with the use of the mother tongue in the early years of schooling and simultaneous systematic instruction in English as an additional language work well in minority contexts elsewhere. And, of course, tests designed for the actual population of test takers rather than an imaginary monolingual mother tongue speaker of Standard English.

Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson, & Deborah Loakes (2011). NAPLAN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENTS FOR INDIGENOUS CHILDREN IN REMOTE COMMUNITIES: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 34 (3), 320-343.
Available for open access here.