Machjo
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Posts posted by Machjo
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48 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:
We've had horrible problems historically with unity & politics in having 2 large language groups. It literally almost destroyed the country several times. We do not need more divisiveness, we need more unity.
A multilinguistic society with one common second language can work even better than one with no common language and two dominant groups.
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39 minutes ago, Argus said:
Simard was the one who really boosted this as a huge 'attack' on Francophones. Many suspect she is going to go for the federal riding of Prescott-Russell next year, which will likely be vacated by its current Liberal occupant. She can wrap herself in the noble mantra of "Defender of la Francophonie!" and not only get elected but quickly bumped into Trudeau's cabinet.
Could be. I think though that some Francophones don't realize they're playing with fire. Quebec is very cautious about court rulings that increse French language righrts outside of quebec out of a fear that it expand English language rights in Quebec. French Canadians outside of Quebec shouldn't act surprised if Quebc suddenly turns on them like it in the Yukon case.
Yes, Quebecers seemed simpathetic to the plight of Franco-Ontarians, but that was just an initial emotional response. After thinking it through some more, they'll react more rationally. If this goes to court to ask for more French language rights in Ontario, Quebec could very well either bow out or even present acase against the Franco-Ontarians. If it goes to court, it could be interesting.
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1 minute ago, Argus said:
There's nothing wrong with being able to provide service to the public in their own language. But the internal bilingualism is unnecessary, expensive, and hugely diminishes the talent available. Almost all communication between government and citizen now is by phone or mail, and you don't need bilingualism for that. Separate groups can handle requests based on language.
True. I was referring to an official language of internal government administration.
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21 minutes ago, Argus said:
Stop requiring bilingualism except for specific positions which deal with the public. The federal government already designates a 'language of work' for specific geographical areas. For example, you cannot work in Ottawa if you can't speak English. You cannot work in Montreal if you can't speak French. There is no need of internal bilingualism because everyone who works on this side of the river has to be sufficiently fluent in English to do their jobs.
I actually do favour official unilingualism jurisdictionally. That's why I think Ontartio should adopt English as its sole official language of government administration while leaving each municipality to choose its own official language too.
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1 hour ago, turningrite said:
1.) English is overwhelmingly the preferred choice for second language instruction throughout multilingual Europe (and much of the rest of the world), a trend that's increased substantially over the past couple decades according to a Pew Research study. The dominant role of English in international affairs and popular culture is the reality that most suppresses the inclination and need in primarily English-language societies to learn or use foreign languages. It's just a fact of life.
2.) Well, the Constitution is pretty clear that English and French are the primary languages in this country. Most of us who attended school here, at least in decades past, were made aware that the Canadian Confederation of 1867 was explicitly intended as a political arrangement between the two primary linguistic groups then dominant in Canada, the French and the English. In my opinion, it's one of the great myths of Canadian multiculturalism that Canada somehow exists as a cultural blank slate of sorts. The risible young Mr. Trudeau, who promotes a "post-national" vision for Canada, might believe in this nonsense but it's sustainable only if one simply erases the country's past. Most multi-generational Canadians are of mixed (mainly) European ethnicity. This doesn't detract from the fact that English and French form the basic framework of the country's dual linguistic heritage and current reality.
3.) You shouldn't get too upset about the notion of 'two founding races' as this had a different connotation in generations past than is the case today. The term 'race' was simply a substitute for what we now describe as ethnicity. For instance, my long-form Ontario birth registration form lists my 'race' as French and Irish. (The other less prominent bits, Portuguese and English, were simply ignored.) Those who object to the old-fashioned terminology should simply substitute 'societies' for 'races' in order to more accurately understand the meaning of the term and in order to avoid becoming sidelined by arcane debates focused on semantics.
1. I'm not disputing that even in those states in which the student can choose his second language, English remains the preferred choice. I'm well aware that Eastern Europe is somewhat of an anomaly and even in Hungary where English might be the least popular choice, English still comes first at over 40% far ahead of German in the 30% range. And that's not to mentioni the many states especially in the Far East that simply make English compulsory. But let's not confuse studying the language with achieving any reasonable level of competence in it. The success rate in germany hovers at around 7% and in India at around 4% for example; and even Quebec experiences shortages of competent English teachers and most Quebcers fail to learn English well too. A difference exists between a language's popularity among students and the actual rate of success in that language.
2. You are in fact correct. Indigenous and other peoples were very much excluded. Indigenous peoples were soon interrred at residential schools and while the state tolearated Germans, Ukrainians, etc. for a while when it needed them, it later turned on them when it banned them from sending their children to school in their languages after WWI.
3. I've read the B&B Commission report, so I'm well aware that 'race' was used more or les synonymously with 'people,' but it also makes it clear that 'the Indians and the eskimaux' and 'the other ethnic groups' didn't belong. In fact, its entire Book I pretty much devotes itself to definig and defending the idea of 'two founding races' even though the only linguist by profession among the commissioners wrote a dissenting opijnion rejecting the idea of 'two founding race,' arguing that there existed a few 'founding races' including the Ukrainians and other European Canadians and that they should enjoy certain language rights regionally too; though even he made sure to exclude any non-European peoples from the mix. It's basically a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical claim of mythic proportions. Heck, even chinook contains words of Chinese origin, and that's an indigenous language.
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2 minutes ago, cannuck said:
To really know the answer, I suggest the Golden Rule...follow the gold. Who paid for and arranged the demonstrations? I suspect no fuss in YT since Doug Ford was not elected there and the looney left media could not (arrange?) cover an attack on anyone who threatens the Liberal/liberal grip on power.
I suspect another factor was optics. They could present the issue with Ford as something to do with those evil English. The French vs. the English. Had they had an uprising about Quebec's move, it would have been a French family feud for all the Anglos to see. Wouldn't want that.
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21 hours ago, taxme said:
Maybe they should not be allowed to have a french university. All that will happen if a french university was built would be to promote french and french Quebec and a place for the french to attack Anglophones and demand even more rights. The french language needs to stay in Quebec only. Bilingualism has not done a thing to promote unity but has divided both people instead. And not to forget to mention that bilingualism has probably cost the Canadian taxpayer's trillions in tax dollars by now. The french have always been running and pretty much ruining the rest of Canada. Quebec serves no purpose in Canada. They have become a pain in the Anglo ass.
Maybe Quebec should give back the Anglophones their rights in Quebec. It seems that it's always about french rights in Canada but never Anglophone rights in Quebec. Quebec should not be allowed to call itself a unilingual french speaking province only and get away with it. I know dam well that if an English speaking province did the same thing they would be attacked right away by the Anglophone media and Anglophone politicians. The Anglophones in this country are their own worse enemy.
If Quebec was all concerned about saving their language then all they had to do was to create a law that says that everything done in Quebec would be done in English and french. There was no need to make Anglophones not feel at home in their own home and province. The french are kicking the Anglophones asses every day and they could care leas about it. Bloody sad indeed.
So if I understand you correctly, Franco-Ontarians should just pay their taxes and then shut up?
I oppose Franco-Ontarians demanding special rights for themselves above and beyond what we might grant Deaf, indigenous, and other language communities, but I also oppose attempts to purposely quash all diversity too.
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16 minutes ago, turningrite said:
Apparently, you don't know and/or understand Canadian history? Where are you from?
Informally various immigrant languages may well have persisted in schools in locations where a critical mass of speakers were present. I doubt, however, that Ontario ever explicitly funded German-language schools nor would any aspect of Canada's constitution or its history have compelled it to. As for the Finns and Swedes, there has long been interaction between the Scandinavian countries and respect for each others' languages has a historical component. It's my understanding, however, that by far the most commonly taught second language in Scandinavia and throughout continental Europe for that matter, is English. This has nothing to do with unofficial language rights and instead is grounded in economic factors related to the status of English as the world's modern 'lingua franca'.
I could be wrong, but I think English is compulsory in Scandinavian secondary schools. Bear i mind though that they're also Germanic countries. France is one country where students do have a choice but overwhelmingly choose Engllish. Qhen France tried to rectify that by making a second foreign language compulsory, they overwhelmingly turned to German as their second foreign language. So yes, it doesn't always work in all countries, but even the French system still has the virtue of giving choice at least in principle. Where choice of the second language has proven more successul is Hungary where only around 40% of students actually choose English, around 30% German, and shockingly, Esperanto comes in a distant third followed by French in close fourth followed by other languages numbering over fourty from which to chooce.
As to why it's proven so successful in Hungary, I can only guess that it might have to do with regional factors. I know Poland allows at least English, German, French, and Esperanto too, so the language policies of neighbouring countries might play a role to an extent.
As for Canadian history, I know enough to know that the notion of 'two founding races' is a myth. I've read the B&B Commission report. In fact, did you know that the only linguist by profession among the Commissioners wrote a dissenting opinion in the report with the main focus of his dissent surrounding the notion of 'two founding races.' Also, did you know that Chinook Jargon, an indigenous language of the pacific Northwest, borrowed words from Chinese too? Did you know that Ukrainian Canadians consider themselves among the 'founding races' of Canada too? You'll find that in the dissenting option of the B&B Commission report if you read it.
The report makes for dry reading, granted, but I think one can not truly understand the development of the notion of 'two founding races' without reading at least Book I of that report. Perhaps ironcally, my reading of that report made me further reject the notion of 'two founding races.' I say ironically since except for the dissenting opinion, the rest of it attempts to convince me to adopt the notion of 'two founding races.'
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By the way, Quebec suffers a similarly critical shortage of English second-language teachers and for the same reason.
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5 minutes ago, turningrite said:
1.) NO
2.) NO
3.) NO - If some people want access to such programs they can and should pay for their children to attend private schools.
4.) Maybe this might be a good idea if it were possible but would be very difficult to implement in anything less than a few decades due to the lack of qualified teachers. It's difficult as it is to get qualified teachers to staff French-language immersion programs in many places across Canada. Also, people in places like Europe can move about and practice and maintain their language skills. I have friends who were raised speaking French or other languages who admit they've lost their fluency due to living for years or decades in mainly English-speaking North America.
One reason for the critical shortage of French-language teachers is precicely because Ontario imposes French as a second language in all of its schools. Should it allow more freedom, then more sino-Ontarians might decide to study education in university and teach Chinese as a second language too. Some unilingual Anglo-Ontarians might decide to study Esperanto (due to its ease of learning) and become qualified as second-language teachers too. Some Deaf Ontarians might then have an interest in pursuing a career in second-language education too. Within a generation, we wouldn't have this critical shortage of competent teachers anymore. the reason for the critical shortage is a government-imposed second-language bottleneck in our schools.
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2 minutes ago, turningrite said:
The problem with language diversity is critical mass. It simply wouldn't be practical to educate Canadians in vast numbers of languages. And why would Germans living in Canada ever have expected to send their children to German-language schools? For better or worse, Canada has always functioned as a somewhat brittle political pact between its primarily English-language and French-language populations. That's a historical fact that's now a historical legacy. We're increasingly receptive to the notion that Indigenous Canadians, whose history in this country long predates European contact, have a right to maintain their languages even if for practical purposes these languages will likely never be widely used. We also make efforts where possible to address the practical needs of deaf Canadians. Multiple immigrant groups are also for practical purposes provided services in some locations but it would be outrageously unwieldy and expensive to elevate these efforts to "rights" that would compel accommodation. Where else in the world does such a situation exist? If it does anywhere, it would surely fall under the category of an exception that proves a rule.
What would have given German Ontarians that idea? Probably the fact that they actually did enjoy that right prior to WWI and in fact had established schools around Berlin Ontario.
As for unofficial language rights, those exist in a few countries. Sweden has a school-voucher program. It's history is interesting too in that the most vocal proponents of the program were members of unofficial language communities, especially the Saami and the Finns. Under the school-voucher program, they do not enjoy the guaranteed right to education in their language, but they do enjoy the freedom to do so according to market supply and demand. The rest is up to them.
In Hungary, any person or NGO can present a course plan for any language to the Ministry of Education which it will then rate according to its pedagogical soundness. Once the plan is approved, any public school can teach it and any student can take a test in it to fulfil the second-language requirement for high-school graduation, again according to teacher supply and parent or student demand.
Indonesia has one official language, Indonesian, which evolved from a trade Pidgin (since systematically developed for use by the state) that few in Indonesia actually speak as a first language. Instead, it serves as the state's official lingual franca. In a sense, Indonesia turns the notion of language rights on its head. In Indonesia, no one has a right to his first language and everyone has an obligation to learn the official language of the state. One advantage with this is that since it's no one's 'ethnic' language, Indonesians therefore have no interest in promoting it as such and instead want to promote it as Indonesia's auxiliary language to serve as a common second language in conjunction with the mother tongue. This is very different from the case in Canada where the state promotes the languages of its two dominant ethnic groups and so has a certain incentive to assimilate others to it.
So yes, others states do recognize the idea of unofficial-language rights.
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As for Anglo-Quebecers, I don't believe they should enjoy more rights than any other of Quebec's unofficial language communities either.
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8 minutes ago, turningrite said:
It's true that Ontario is not officially bilingual. But there are vast swaths of Quebec outside of the Montreal region and Eastern Townships where there are very few Anglophones. Quebec, however, still funds extensive English-language services, including three mainly English-language universities, despite the fact that it's official language is explicitly French. Many English-speaking Canadians point to Quebec's French-language laws and the status of French as its sole official language to justify their antipathy. My guess is that many Franco-Ontarians would be quite happy were Ontario to fund French-language services to the same extent English-language services are funded in Quebec.
You want the opinioin of a Franco-Ontarian? Well, here's mine:
1. Ontario should rename the Ministry of Francophone Affairs 'the Ministry for Language Rights.'
2. Appoint a Commissioner for Language Rights, a Deputee Commissioner for Deaf Language Rights, a Deputee Commissioner for Indigenous Language Rights, and a Deputee Commissioner for an International Auxiliary Language, but do not increase the Commission's budjet and instead just shrink staff as required to hire the Commissioners. It has fourteen staff members at present, so it should be able to find the savings from that.
3. Establish a school-voucher program that would allow each student to present a voucher to the institution of his choice and allow each institution to teach in the official or unofficial language of its choice accoridng to market supply and demand.
4. Make learning a second language in secondary school compulsory (as is already the case), but let each school teach and each student take the test in the second language of his choice (within reasonable limits like in Hungary) to fulfil the second-language requirement to obtain his secondary-school diploma. in Hungary for example, a student can choose from languages as diverse as Latin, Esperanto, and Hungarian Sign Language among many others.
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3 minutes ago, turningrite said:
I find it odd that many people outside of Quebec react so strongly against French language institutions and rights. We uncontroversially fund multilingual services and heritage language programs and yet French language services somehow generate vitriol and angst. Sure, English-speaking Canadians can point to Quebec's often antagonistic language laws and policies, including Bill 101, as justification for their antipathy. But, unlike the precarious situation of the French language outside of Europe, English is not a threatened language in North America or in the rest of the world for that matter. Despite its irritating laws, Quebec funds three mainly English-language universities while, as I understand it, Ontario funds no primarily French-language university. I wonder how many Ontarians realize that Ontario once tried to essentially ban the use of French in the province's education system? Those who don't should research Regulation 17. My Franco-Ontarian paternal grandfather was a young man when the infamous regulation became law. Based on his own experience, including suffering economic discrimination, he believed that French-Canadians living outside of Quebec were doomed to assimilate and he didn't even try to raise his own children to speak French. He used to say that 'English is the language of money' and more or less left it at that. I doubt that Doug Ford has read much history nor I believe has he studied at any university. Perhaps if he were more aware of Ontario's sometimes ignominious treatment of its Franophone population he might refrain from rubbing salt in a not fully healed wound.
While what you say is true, it applies even more to other languages. For example, sign-language communities are even more marginalized. Also, German Ontarians lost the right to send their children to school in German after WWI, but unlike Franco-Ontarians, have not regained that right to this day.
If I had my way, I'd rename the Ministry 'the Ministry for Language Rights' and broaden its scope to include Deaf, indigenous, and other unofficial language rights too.
As for the Francophone university, just issue school vouchers, let each student present an electronic voucher at the participating university of his choice, and let each participating university teach in the official or unofficial language of its choice. What irritates me the most as a Franco-Ontarian myself is not the ignorance that some anglophones reveal towards French but the ignorance francophones reveal towards other languages. In many respects, French Canadians are just as self-centred as English Canadians on this matter.
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In 2015, the Government of Quebec stood against the Commission scolaire francophone du Yukon's call for more freedom to accept more students to its schools at the Supreme Court of Canada.
While French-speaking communities spoke out against Quebec's move, we never witnessed the uprising we witnessed in Ontario in the last week. Why is it that when Quebec opposed more language rights for French Canadians outside of Quebec, French Canadians politely expressed their disappointment; but when an anglophone should do the same, all hell breaks loose?
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4 minutes ago, cannuck said:
Agreed. However, something goofy such as esparante or whatever it was called may not have the things that the best of the bunch would need: some hard and fast rules on how new words are structured from roots. While English may not be perfect (in fact far from it) it DOES have some workable rules that allow for new words. There is a reason that pretty much everything in academia is published in English.
Besides, we have already establish that I am a greedy, selfish prick, so since I don't have good enough memory to be really good at more than one language, I would prefer the international standard was the one I already speak.
Actually, Esperanto, like any other living language, is in constant development. According to one study, due to Esperanto being from five to ten times easier to learn than English, if the EU switched to Esperanto as its common second language, that could save the EU from 17 to 18 billion euros yearly. It's kind of ironic how Esperanto is the fiscally conservative choice in the long term.
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15 minutes ago, cannuck said:
To be more precise, languages are not that difficult to learn, they are just very difficult to learn a) to speak well, and b) to translate idioms, sayings, ideas, etc. to fit the rules and nuances of other languages. Our children are multi-lingual, and routinely take me to task for clumsy translations to and from French. I was lucky to have a handler once who specialized in Japanese. He was so good at it, he could teach Japanese classical literature, language and even technical subjects in a Japanese university (his PhD was in cultural anthropology - which led him down that path). Working with him over several months in yet another foreign nation gave me plenty of opportunity to see up close just how intense one's education and experience needs to be to be totally capable in a very different language. His particular skill was in deciphering how Japanese changed the key to military encryption codes (yes, WWII era). I am in awe of people who are effectively able to master more than one language, but even at that level, there is still a LOT more to learn of the culture to really get the drift of the language.
Yes, but you can't expect your local marriage registrar, police or immigration officer, or even lawyer to get a specialized degree in a foreign language. That requires a major investment of time and money on a mass scale. That's where an international auxiliary language could come in handy. We cannot afford to provide specialized language training to our entire civil service.
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2 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:
Canada has two official languages in its constitution. As long as Canada exists, that will not change.
I've translated between the two official languages and between co-nationals.
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43 minutes ago, Bonam said:
Not really. Technology gets better over time, and the cost of technology goes down over time. Meanwhile, the language capabilities of humans stay the same from generation to generation, but the pay of government civil servants just goes up and up over time. Sooner or later, the machine version will be more cost effective. My bet is on sooner rather than later.
I know a few languages and work in the language industry so I do have some knowledge with regards to the complexities of language. Remember that mortal human beings with limited human knowledge of imperfect human languages will be creating this technology. Do you know a second language? Have you ever had to translate complex text from one language to another?
Let's put it another way. Why do you think most languages arte so difficult to learn? And if a language is that difficult to learn (just because it includes so many complex components, then how do you think we can create this technology in any cost effective manner? Remember too that a language changes over time, meaning a need for constant upgrading.
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Just now, Bonam said:
People deep in a specific field often tend to overestimate the complexities of their own field and underestimate the ability of people outside their own field to come up with creative solutions. None of the problems you mention are any more qualitatively difficult than dozens of other problems that are actively being researched and addressed by people working in AI and machine learning. As for Lojban and Esperanto, the US couldn't even switch to metric, let alone adopting new languages. Not gonna happen.
You do have a point in saying that a person who intended to rely on machine translation would not intend to learn another language to use it more effectively, since that would defeat the whole point of machine translation (i.e. not needing to learn another language). Going by that, then we need to accept certain limitations.
Firstly, machine translation will probably never be able to produce a literary translation, so let's put that aside and focus on academic or technical translation.
As for technical translation from English without needing to learn another language (since that's the pont of it after all), then I could see three different solutions.
For the buyer on a budget, Google translate as it now exists. Highly unreliable and not something you'd want to rely on if your life depended on it, but it can usually produce reasonably comprehensible translations from simple sentences.
For the one willing to spend a lot more, I could see an interactive machine translator that would request clarification at each stage of the translation process. It might be a slow and tedious process, but it could produce an accurate translation at last.
For the wealthy, a total machine-translation system, interconnected with every smart device he owns to collect as much information as possible to help provide context, with unlimited internet access and cloud storage. Even then, it might still need prompting, but it could present the meaning it thinks is the correct one at the top of the list, so that in most cases the person would just need to select the first option. The information it would be processing would probably mean that you'd need extremely high-speed internet.
So yes, it's doable. But as a taxpayer, would you not rather Government employees just share a common language?
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12 minutes ago, Bonam said:
You mean like the cell phones that everyone already carries around almost everywhere?
That would not be enough. The machine would need input from both visual and audio contexts too. Your phone is not recording your every move, is it? Unless it is, then the machine translator would be missing context.
Now, a simple solution to that would be to program the translator to request clarification; but especially for a language like English where nearly every word can mean severeal things, for the machine to correctly translate one sentence might require multiple requests for clarification. That could be a very tedious process, especially in an industry in which time is money.
Beyond language, the machine must also understand cultural context, which again could vary somewhat even between municipalities. The input required would be phenomenal.
Now of course some solutions exist. For example, we could learn a language like Lojban and machine-translate from that. Since Lojban is so semantically precise, all necessary linguistic input would already be included in the sentence. But then if everyone must learn Lojban, why not just skip machine translation altogether and just communicate in Lojban? And if we all need to learn a common second language anyway, then why not an easier one like Espeanto (since except for cybernetic communication like machine translation, Lojban is far more precise than most people would need in their daily lives anyway)?
Anyone who knows a second language understands the complexities involved in communication. It involves not only grammar and lexis but context too. And context itself is far more complex than many realise. While the human brain can compute it instantly based on a lifetime of accumlated personal knowledge, how do you program that kind of data into a computer system individually for each person? Even English contains different dialects and different accents exist across the English-speaking world and even English-speakers might have lived very different life experiences which can afect the meaning of their sentence. It's far more complicated than some seem to realize.
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Also, what happens when the machine breaks down in an emergency? Would we accept pilots and ships' captains relying on this technology with the possibility of the battery dying all of a sudden or the machine getting damaged due to rain or impact, etc. It would need to be a physically robust system too, which would just add to the cost.
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34 minutes ago, Bonam said:
That's true but that's the power of technology and computation. You only need one set of experts with the right linguistic and technical skills to solve the problem once. After that, the power of what they have created is available to everyone else, expert or not.
But you leave out one point. Most human languages, and especially English, are too grammatically vague for the purpose. If I worked in the field of professional machine translation, I'd focus on translation from Lojban and expect professionals to learn that language. When precise translation is less important (i.e. where misunderstanding wouldn't risk a person's safety in anyway and at most could cause some inconveniences), then translation from ambiguous languages like English would suffice. Again, the problem is not with the tech (we have that already), it's with the language itself. English is not suited for cybernetic communication.
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15 minutes ago, Bonam said:
Real people also have to guess which of the possible meanings of a phrase is actually meant when speaking to each other in the same language. This guessing is based on the context. There is no reason that machine translation cannot, with further development, be able to use context as deeply as humans do to inform its understanding (and therefore translation) of phrase meanings. That's why I gave a time of 10 years in the future, not this year or next year, because there's still a ways to go until the algorithms exist to do deeply context-aware translation.
Even a human might need to ask the original speaker which he meant between different possibilities, though we could program a machine to do the same.
Now if you want a machine that has the same interpretive capabilities as a human, you'd have to walk around everywhere with a GPS cap on your head with audio and video to record every aspect of your life so that when you refer to an inside joke you heard, or referring to the party you attended yesterday, etc. it could always know which you meant between different possible meanings. That would be an extremely expensive system. Also, I can't imagine government employees consenting to walking around with these things strapped to their heads daily and I can't imagine the taxpayer being willing to pay for it. If we want a world with efficient machine translation, we'd all need to learn Lojban, but that would defeat the whole point of machine translation, wouldn't it?
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Canada's Bilingualism Racket
in Federal Politics in Canada
Posted
Of course a person who resides in Ontario should probably know English except maybe (big maybe) in majority-French municipalities. However, encouraging people to become bilingual helps the tourist indutry. Unless we're now going to expect foreign tourists to know English too? Trust me, a good chunk of tourists to Canada do not know English. Knowing a second language helps not only for those who live here but to interact with tourists and others too. In fact, though I presently work in Quebec, I call South America, Europe, and more rarely Asia on a fairly regular basis and if I'm dealing with a smaller business (which is often the case), I do encounter language barriers often enough but I muddle through inefficiently. the fact is that the world is quite integrated and so we should promote personal bilingualism.