[Olpc-Haiti] [RE] Where to find Haitian Kréyol professional translators

[christinewlow]

All students take Creole in elementary and high school, so all  
teachers should be able to read Creole. Yes they may be used to  
reading more French texts but all understand the Creole language. The  
most democratic thing to do is to make all books and manuals bi  
lingual where one cover is Creole and then you turn the book over and  
it is French. I think that this would be the most acceptable method of  
dealing with the Creole/ French issue for the whole population. Then  
all Haitians would become more literate in both languages much more  
quickly.
But if people start talking "expense of doing 2 languages then the  
text should definitely be in Creole.
Chris Low
MCLC Co-director
www.matenwaclc.org
617 543 8844 USA
011 509 3 711 0661 Haiti
011 509 2 513 0217  LKM

"If you have come to help me you are wasting your time, but if you  
have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us  
work together."

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On Feb 4, 2010, at 1:33 AM, Michel DeGraff wrote:

>
>
> Re:
>
>> We will probably want to include this French manual in our
>> distribution in  Haiti.  Many / (most?) teachers in Haiti read French
>> better than they do Kreyòl.
>
> Perhaps the most construstive and progressive way to think about  
> this is
> in terms of what the eventual objectives should be for the typical
> Haitian child.  It seems to me that one objective is to promote
> constructivist/constructionist/experiential learning à la
> Piaget/Papert/Dewey whereby students are allowed to use their own
> creative resources as they contribute to their own learning in a
> non-authoritative mode.  This is very different from the traditional
> rote-memorization model that most Haitian teachers are used to.  So  
> here
> we have a unique opportunity to contribute to fundamental change to
> education in Haiti.
>
> One non-negotiable prerequisite for this unleashing of individual
> creativity from Haitian children, instead of rote memorization, is the
> use of the kids' native language.  If so, then teachers as well should
> be brought on board on that mission to promote Kreyòl at _all_ stages
> in the learning process for Kreyòl-speaking children.  In turn, this
> entails the necessity of manuals in Kreyòl in order to ensure that the
> teachers themselves are well versed in the Kreyòl terminology,
> interfaces and courseware that they will be using to help the children
> learn.
>
> Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the majority of Haitian teachers in
> Haiti are _vastly_ more comfortable in Kreyòl than they are in French.
> Besides, the Kreyòl orthography, which its systematic relationship
> between sounds and letters, is more logical and systematic than French
> orthography, which is relatively more opaque.  Thus, with an adequate
> amount of training, native Kreyòl speakers can become competent Kreyòl
> writers---much faster than in French.
>
> Given the facts above, manuals in French for XO pilots in places  
> such as
> La Gonave (which is where the next XO pilot is scheduled) would
> introduce yet another severe cognitive bottleneck (and another "class
> bias"?) in the instruction of monolingual Kreyòl-speaking
> children---the numerical majority among children in Haiti.
>
> I hope this makes sense.  The facts themselves are pretty well
> established.  But logic is sometimes muddled by ideology and politics.
>
>                                -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: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 06:22:06 -0500
>   From: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
> Reply-To: John Rigdon <jrigdon at researchonline.net>
> Subject: Re: [Olpc-Haiti] [RE] Where to find Haitian Kréyol profes
> sional translators
>     To: Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org>, olpc-haiti at lists.laptop.org
>
>
>> We will probably want to include this French manual in our  
>> distribution in
>> Haiti.  Many / (most?) teachers in Haiti read French better than  
>> they do
>> Kreyòl.
>>
>> Kreyòl pale, Kreyòl konprann?
>> (I speak Creole, but do I understand Creole? - Thanks Michel)
>>
>> John Rigdon
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Olpc-haiti mailing list
>> Olpc-haiti at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-haiti
>>
>
>
> ----- End message from jrigdon at researchonline.net -----
>
>