Mislav
New Member
Quote of the French language debate "Assad has killed 8 times more people than ISIS" - Elizabeth May. I'm no fan of Assad but could anybody seriously say they would rather be under ISIS than Assad?
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I was really surprised to see Mulcair jump on Trudeau for his father's handling of the October crisis in the debate last night. Given yesterday was the anniversary of Trudeau's death, it seemed a little cruel and unsporting - and attempt to throw Justin Trudeau off? And hardly relevant to anything up for debate these days.
What seems particularly ironic to me, is that Mulcair would ever go in that direction, given the unfortunate relationship between the FLQ terrorists and the NDP in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. The NDP did ultimately take steps to distance themselves from convicted FLQ assassin Paul Rose - but it wasn't quick. And to this day, the NDP continues to court those in Quebec who sympathized and even supported the assassination of the deputy Premier.
So why did Mulcair of all people open this to debate?
And it seemed like Trudeau was waiting for that moment to pounce on Mulcair or Harper over bringing up his father. His response was well prepared and definitely one of the debate's highlights.
While many criticized Mulcair for his quick shots at other candidates, I actually enjoyed them. It's always nice to see a bit of humour added to debates. Trudeau and Harper were good sports and seemed to enjoy them too.
For those who watched from home...was there any discussion around how much of the debate (particularly from Trudeau and Mulcair) was conducted in French? My personal read was that their campaigns have figured out that Quebec is very much "in play" and they were speaking to to Quebec voters for that reason.
It left much of the live audience (primarily, as you would imagine, anglophones) watching the debate on the large screens that had a very slow and bizarre translation service. I am not a particular fan of either gentleman but I give them enough credit to know that, often, the tranlsations we saw could not possibly be what they were saying.
So the translation was equally bad as we got at the eventMy only complaint with the debate was the production value, and most of the issues came from the translations.
Watching on TV, I was stuck listening to a shrilly voice translating the French portions into English, but the lady kept stumbling on words and leaving lots of gaps. Felt like I was likely missing some things as a result. When the leaders switched back to English, the translator was often still translating the French portion, which would cut off the beginning of the English.
There was also a few times where the translator failed to translate anything at all... as if she just got up and went to the bathroom. Somewhere mid-way, the voice switched to a man, who then also disappeared.
CPAC had a different group of translators, but following the debate on Twitter, it sounded like people watching the CPAC feed weren't happy with their translators either. One person even posted a pic of them watching both feeds at the same time to make sure they weren't missing anything.
It should not have been a bilingual debate. I don't think they thought it through.
what about people (like last night) that take the spoken word and turn it into written words for the public to read....it is never simple, is it?Personal bugbear. Translators work with the written word; interpreters do the oral work.
(See http://www.languagescientific.com/t...ces/interpreting-vs-translation-services.html)