FEMA fires group for nonsensical Alaska Native translations

[Stevicus]

FEMA fires group for nonsensical Alaska Native translations | AP News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — After tidal surges and high winds from the remnants of a rare typhoon caused extensive damage to homes along Alaska’s western coast in September, the U.S. government stepped in to help residents — largely Alaska Natives — repair property damage.

Residents who opened Federal Emergency Management Agency paperwork expecting to find instructions on how to file for aid in Alaska Native languages like Yup’ik or Inupiaq instead were reading bizarre phrases.

Towards the end of this article, it's revealed that the company used to produce the translation is based out of Berkeley California. It seems to me that they could have hired someone in Alaska who speaks the language and wouldn't botch the translation.

“Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing,” read one passage. The translator randomly added the word “Alaska” in the middle of the sentence.

“Your husband is a polar bear, skinny,” another said.

Yet another was written entirely in Inuktitut, an Indigenous language spoken in northern Canada, far from Alaska.

"Your husband is a polar bear, skinny."

FEMA fired the California company hired to translate the documents once the errors became known, but the incident was an ugly reminder for Alaska Natives of the suppression of their culture and languages from decades past.

FEMA immediately took responsibility for the translation errors and corrected them, and the agency is working to make sure it doesn’t happen again, spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg said. No one was denied aid because of the errors.

That’s not good enough for one Alaska Native leader.

For Tara Sweeney, an Inupiaq who served as an assistant secretary of Indian Affairs in the U.S. Interior Department during the Trump administration, this was another painful reminder of steps taken to prevent Alaska Native children from speaking Indigenous languages.

“When my mother was beaten for speaking her language in school, like so many hundreds, thousands of Alaska Natives, to then have the federal government distributing literature representing that it is an Alaska Native language, I can’t even describe the emotion behind that sort of symbolism,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney called for a congressional oversight hearing to uncover how long and widespread the practice has been used throughout government.

“These government contracting translators have certainly taken advantage of the system, and they have had a profound impact, in my opinion, on vulnerable communities,” said Sweeney, whose great-grandfather, Roy Ahmaogak, invented the Inupiaq alphabet more than a half-century ago.

She said his intention was to create the characters so “our people would learn to read and write to transition from an oral history to a more tangible written history.”

U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik and last year became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, said it was disappointing FEMA missed the mark with these translations but didn’t call for hearings.

“I am confident FEMA will continue to make the necessary changes to be ready the next time they are called to serve our citizens,” the Democrat said.

About 1,300 people have been approved for FEMA assistance after the remnants of Typhoon Merbok created havoc as it traveled about 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) north through the Bering Strait, potentially affecting 21,000 residents. FEMA has paid out about $6.5 million, Rothenberg said.

The poorly translated documents, which did not create delays or problems, were a small part of efforts to help people register for FEMA assistance in person, online and by phone, Zidek said.

Another factor is that while English may not be the preferred language for some residents, many are bilingual and can struggle through an English version, said Gary Holton, a University of Hawaii at Manoa linguistics professor and a former director of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Central Alaskan Yup’ik is the largest of the Alaska Native languages, with about 10,000 speakers in 68 villages across southwest Alaska. Children learn Yup’ik as their first language in 17 of those villages. There are about 3,000 Inupiaq speakers across northern Alaska, according to the language center.

It appears the words and phrases used in the translated documents were taken from Nikolai Vakhtin’s 2011 edition of “Yupik Eskimo Texts from the 1940s,” said John DiCandeloro, the language center’s archivist.

The book is the written record of field notes collected on Russia’s Chukotka Peninsula across the Bering Strait from Alaska in the 1940s by Ekaterina Rubtsova, who interviewed residents about their daily life and culture for a historical account.

The works were later translated and made available on the language center’s website, which Holton used to investigate the origin of the mistranslated texts.

Many of the languages from the area are related but with differences, just as English is related to French or German but is not the same language, Holton said.

Holton, who has about three decades experience in Alaska Native language documentation and revitalization, searched the online archive and found “hit after hit,” words pulled right out of the Russian work and randomly placed into FEMA documents.

So, it seems that whoever did the translation didn't actually speak the Yup'ik language and just pulled random phrases out of a book.

“They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense,” he said, calling the final product a “word salad.”

He said it was offensive that an outside company appropriated the words people 80 years ago used to memorialize their lives.

“These are people’s grandparents and great-grandparents that are knowledge-keepers, are elders, and their words which they put down, expecting people to learn from, expecting people to appreciate, have just been bastardized,” Holton said.

KYUK Public Media in Bethel first reported the mistranslations.

“We make no excuses for erroneous translations, and we deeply regret any inconvenience this has caused to the local community,” Caroline Lee, the CEO of Accent on Languages, the Berkeley, California-based company that produced the mistranslated documents, said in a statement.

She said the company will refund FEMA the $5,116 it received for the work and conduct an internal review to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Lee did not respond to follow-up questions, including how the mistaken translations occurred.

It doesn't seem like a great mystery as to why a California-based company didn't have anyone who could speak Yup'ik, but it is a mystery as to why the Federal government couldn't find a speaker of Yup'ik to provide the translations. They should have been looking in Alaska, not California.

 

[PureX]

This kind of stupidity is everywhere. It's sad, but this is just how we are as a species. Everywhere I have ever worked had it's share of morons that can't think past "I want a cookie". But they have to live, too, so we keep them on the payroll and try to keep them away from anything important. But that only works if the boss isn't also a moron. And that's only true half the time.

 

[exchemist]

FEMA fires group for nonsensical Alaska Native translations | AP News



Towards the end of this article, it's revealed that the company used to produce the translation is based out of Berkeley California. It seems to me that they could have hired someone in Alaska who speaks the language and wouldn't botch the translation.



"Your husband is a polar bear, skinny."







View attachment 70652





So, it seems that whoever did the translation didn't actually speak the Yup'ik language and just pulled random phrases out of a book.





It doesn't seem like a great mystery as to why a California-based company didn't have anyone who could speak Yu'pik, but it is a mystery as to why the Federal government couldn't find a speaker of Yu'pik to provide the translations. They should have been looking in Alaska, not California.

How funny. This is straight out of Monty Python's Hungarian Phrasebook sketch:

But jolly annoying for the people trying to claim assistance, of course.

 

[John53]

Must be the same mob who translated the instructions for my microwave.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Must be the same mob who translated the instructions for my microwave.

Or that wrote this translation:

I will put the translation in a spoiler, but it is not needed:

Spoiler

Welsh road sign thought they were receiving their translation via an email reply. They sent the text “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” to Swansea Council for translation into Welsh and awaited a response. However, the response they received was Welsh for “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”.

 

[exchemist]

Must be the same mob who translated the instructions for my microwave.

You're lucky to have instructions, in words, at all! Just about every appliance I have bought in the last couple of years has had instructions only in the form of diagrams with arrows, IKEA-style.

 

[Revoltingest]

You're lucky to have instructions, in words, at all! Just about every appliance I have bought in the last couple of years has had instructions only in the form of diagrams with arrows, IKEA-style.

My recently purchased Trax X2 ($6000)
has no operating manual at all.
They say watch their youtube videos.
I wrote my own manual to suppplement.
(There are complexities.)

 

[Twilight Hue]

I blame Ikea. It all starts with them.