AnthonyGA,
Thanks!
Sensible write-up from somebody who obviously knows what he's talking about (unlike some here).
Anyway, this incident clearly seems to be some small, unimportant union trying to deny how small and unimportant it is.
Those of you familiar with the union 'structure' in France will already know that the unions currently causing the 'troubles' only represent a tiny percentage of the total work force.
In this particular case, it's sillyness squared, because there IS a another significant majority pilots union, and these people are only a small minority crowd of 'dissidents' or 'militants' or whatever you want to call them.
Unfortunately, technical translations tend to be terrible.
They vary hugely, actually.
Don't confuse the user manual that comes with your DVD player with professional technical translations used in industries (such as aviation) where the translated document matters.
Good translations are cripplingly expensive.
Not really. Compared to the amount of effort that went into the product, and the writing of the original documentation, the cost of the translation is usually peanuts. The real problem is that translation is usually done on the cheap and at the last possible minute, subcontracted to agencies, then parcelled out to people without the necessary specialist background, and not crosschecked and proofread properly because the company itself lacks the competence in the target language.
Been there... had to live with it....
Bad translations are dangerous.
I couldn't agree more.
The French are very good at producing very bad translations.
A bit unfair.... (I'm not French, BTW). It's not the French in particular... look at your Chinese DVD manual. It's nearly always that not enough attention is given to produce accurate and reliable translations.
Personally, I can usually recognise English-language documentation, even fully professionally produced and accurate, where the source language was French.
It's bad enough that some English documentation is written by French people with a relatively poor grasp of English...
Yes.... no.....
I can't comment really, because I usually read "across" those mistaeks, being so accustomed to them. It's a bit like the new Google translations... they're now rarely totally wrong, and I can usually guess what was written in the other language, and get the gist.
One can only hope that Air France pilots are fluent enough in English to not require badly translated documentation in French. The inverse possibility—Air France pilots with such a poor grasp of English that they cannot read documentation in the language—is scary to contemplate.
Same here....
CJ