[lac-discuss-en] Language Services Discussion at ICANN 44, Prague

[Carlton Samuels]

I dare not speak for our EURALO colleagues but FWIW, there may be a
misinterpretation of what was said in the ALAC Policy Discussions; 2
separate occasions.

As I recall, BOTH representatives complained about the time spent to talk
about operational matters instead of discussing policy and they were fed
up. In **this context** and specific to language support, those who spoke
merely repeated a fact of ALAC RoP and declared ICANN policy: English is
the **working** language of ICANN.

Their opinion was that they had an expectation in keeping with this
criteria; that ALAC representatives should be competent to work in English,
so minimizing the need for interpretation.

They also worried about mis-communication from interpretation.

Given a limited budget, they went on to say their preference would be for
more translations of ICANN documents to more languages in addition to the 6
UN languages. In this way, a wider set of end users could be reached. Their
opinion was that expanding interpretation services for meetings to cover
working groups plus 3 other languages was not an effective use of funds to
communicate to end users.

One of our members asked the Language Services Team to examine whether
increasing transcription operations would also not be more valuable to end
users and more effective for communicating.

Members can always check the the archives for themselves.

- Carlton Samuels

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Carlton A Samuels
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*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
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