[Olpc-Haiti] our Haiti translation site's now in English+ French + on Facebook too!

[Michel DeGraff]

John,

I agree with your comment re:

> It has been my experience that most Haitian adults in the diaspora do 
> not read Kreyol well, although they speak it because they were 
> essentially educated in French before
> leaving Haiti.

And they often write it even less well.  And this is not their fault: as
you point out, most educated Haitian adults above certain age were never
trained to write in Kreyòl.   These issues need to be kept in mind as
"volunteers" from the diaspora are being enlisted to translate
interface, software and courseware that are meant to Kreyòl-speaking
children.

This is a point I've stressed many times to OLPC folks, but it has often
fallen on (apparently) deaf ears: translation should be taken as a
serious professional activity on a par with the sort of activities that
OLPC employees and consultants (in Haiti and elsewhere) routinely get
paid for.  I think we have to closely monitor the quality of Kreyòl
translation, especially when it comes to languages like Haitian Creole
that, for too long, have been dismissed as "broken languages" by too
many (though not all) French-speaking Haitians.  Of course, this is
related to the "class bias" that you mention in your email---a class
bias with deeply entrenched historical and socio-economic roots.

Kreyòl pale, kreyòl konprann...


                                 -michel.
_____________________________________________________________________
MIT Linguistics & Philosophy  77 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge MA 02139
degraff at MIT.EDU http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/people/faculty/degraff
_____________________________________________________________________



----- Message from jrigdon at researchonline.net ---------
    Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 21:08:28 -0500
    From: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
Reply-To: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
Subject: Re: [Olpc-Haiti] our Haiti translation site's now in English+
French + on Facebook too!
      To: Michel DeGraff <degraff at mit.edu>, Samuel Klein
<meta.sj at gmail.com>


> Thank you for the clarification Michel.
>
> It has been my experience that most Haitian adults in the diaspora do 
> not read Kreyol well, although they speak it because they were 
> essentially educated in French before leaving Haiti.
>
> It is only those under the age of about 25 who both read and speak Kreyol.
>
> It has been my experience in visiting Haiti over the last few years 
> that the majority of the schools are still being taught in French, 
> and there is  a strong "class" bias to try to learn French and 
> demonstrate profiency.  I hope I'm not being offensive here.  I 
> really don't mean to be.
>
> Happily the young children under about age 12 are really proud of 
> their ability to read Kreyol and overwhelmingly they want to learn 
> English and Spanish.  I think generally these younger children 
> understand Spanish and English better than they do French.
>
> When I first visited Haiti about 8 years ago, I identified 55 books 
> in Kreyol at that time.  I think the universe of titles may be close 
> to 400 now - maybe double that if you include pamphlets, tracts, and 
> brochures.
>
> John Rigdon
> www.ngohaiti.com
>
>
>
>


----- End message from jrigdon at researchonline.net -----