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When language translations go wrongArticle:
FEMA sent ‘unintelligible’ disaster relief application information to Alaska Natives impacted by Typhoon MerbokArticle:
Company to refund FEMA for botched Yup’ik and Iñupiaq translationsArticle:
FEMA Fires Group for Nonsensical Alaska Native TranslationsFrom the above four sources:
Yup'ik and Iñupiaq translations of FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] documents were meant to help people in the Bering Strait Region who were impacted by Typhoon Merbok.
"Whoever created the Yup’ik translations just lifted full phrases from a compilation of language and folklore from Far East Russia known as the Rubtsova texts. It was published in the Soviet Union in the 1940s."
"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."
"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."
"Where FEMA’s news release says 'State News Desk,' the translated version reads, 'when she said so, the dog ran farther off from the curtain.' In another section of the same document, what should be a translation of information about the Small Business Administration reads, 'that one said that I should draw a line on the ice when he gets close.'"
"'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."
"The Iñupiaq translations were written in the Inuktitut alphabet.... and from what I am told by Inuktitut speakers, those translations are not even words."
"The mistake should have been an easy catch because the Inuktitut alphabet is made up of syllabic characters, unlike Iñupiaq where many of the letters are identical to the Latin alphabet."
"I mean, we're talking about extremely remote places in Alaska, where in some place you have a case of diapers that costs ninety-nine dollars, so twenty-seven thousand [dollars] may be the tip of the iceberg to use an Alaska analogy, which is precisely why Congress needs to look into this... twenty-seven thousand may not mean a lot to people in Washington DC but I guarantee you it means a lot to the folks in the Calista region and up in the northern regions of Alaska where it's extremely difficult to access goods and services."
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Currently, I'm taking a conversational French course at my local college, but apart from that, Anki is probably my only intentional language study. Anyway, here's the link: 
wia wi nehas-kolwatos lae angos! Check out my IAL 
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