The self-service counter at my auntie's local library in Noosa, Australia, offers multiple language options.
My auntie was pleasantly surprised to see Macedonian was one of the languages offered, so she sent me a photo to prove it.
And Pirate is also an option! Aye, aye, captain!
How impressive! Isn't it wonderful that they're thinking about people in Noosa who don't have English as their primary language... or is it?
We have many problems here though. Let's go through them...
☠️ The capitalisation used in the Macedonian text here is incorrect in a way that would strongly suggest machine translation or AI was used and not reviewed by an actual professional translator.
☠️ You'd think then that providing an option for Macedonian was in response to the local area having a number of Macedonian speakers who are insufficiently proficient or illiterate in English, and need help to take out items from the library's extensive Macedonian-language resources. The reality is that in Noosa the number of actual Macedonian speakers, let alone with limited English literacy to warrant an option, is negligible. And why would a Macedonian speaker with limited or no English literacy use this counter at a library where there are no books or resources in Macedonian to borrow? Is there really a need to provide options in the languages provided here where according to the results from the 2021 Australian census, under 8% of the population of Noosa speaks a language other than English at home (the top languages being German and French, which is not typical for Australia) and at a library that, according to my auntie, has hardly any resources to borrow in any language apart from English?
☠️ Use of flags to represent languages is very problematic. Many of the countries represented by flags here are multilingual, and many languages are spoken in a number of countries. Take for instance, there is a Sri Lankan flag. Does this flag icon here represent Sinhalese or Tamil? Most of the Sri Lankans in Australia are native Tamil speakers but the assumption here would be that the icon represents Sinhalese.
🚨 Considering the unlikely need for these language options, this looks more like ticking the cultural diversity box for bureaucratic purposes rather than providing an actual service.
☠️ It may be cute that 'Pirate' is offered as an option, but the resources wasted on creating and maintaining this option could have gone to a providing a language that is actually in need. By adding such frivolous options such as 'Pirate' also insinuates that all non-English options are just a joke, inadvertently denigrating people of non-English speaking background who are supposed to be benefitting the access that these language technologies are supposed to provide.
⚠️ Better planning and communication are required with language provision, otherwise we are just wasting resources and in turn underhandedly advancing, and not countering, the dominance of English.
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