After Typhoon Merbok, FEMA hired a California company to translate information into two Alaska Native languages about applying for aid. Experts who reviewed the translations used words like 'incorrect,' 'unintelligible' and offensive' to describe them.
According to Holton, in at least one of the documents 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.”
“There’s a lot of that historical trauma of being beaten in schools because they were speaking their Indigenous languages, which is why there’s a generation of us in Alaska that struggle with fluency,” Sweeney said.The company contracted to do the work iswhose website boasts a 100% customer satisfaction rate and touts its recent service in Alaska “after emergency flooding.
At least two Inuktitut speakers in Canada said that a tri-fold glossy brochure created for FEMA by Accent on Languages is unintelligible. According to FEMA, the agency paid $27,800 for the translations. The money comes out of a larger contract Accent on Languages holds with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. There are at least half a dozen news releases and other documents that have been translated incorrectly.
Staff from both Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola’s offices said that they informed the agency that the translations had many problems. In response, Sanders said that the mistranslated documents were removed from FEMA’s website. The agency also hired an Alaska-based company to continue the work.
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