11.13.08 kulturnatib

Biere de Saint Michel
Quebec is the Canadian province that takes language seriously. Very seriously. It has been said that Quebec is more French than the French. While the rest of the world, for example, is amenable enough to using 'computer' no matter what language they speak and appropriating it accordingly, in Quebec it has to be 'ordinateur.'

As part of this seriousness with language, product labeling are required by law to be in both English and French. This goes as well with names of businesses though implementation has been less than strict. Thus, Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, also has to be PFK or Poulet Frit Kentucky.

Having worked at packaging design in a country a similar law was in effect, I am familiar with the difficulties this present. Although having prepared materials provided to us and our main concerns were designing these in a visually appealing and effective way, I was aware that the two language requirement immediately doubled the chances of mistakes.

Many of us are familiar with or have been victims of China-made products whose accompanying labels or assembly and operating manuals run from the simply funny to the dangerously wrong. I once bought a computer table that made me wonder if a rocket assembly manual had mistakenly found its way into the box.

Last week I had the opportunity to see how one of our favorite products will fare in this bilingual territory.

I had a performance art piece that included a message in the bottle routine. Since the message or the messages were about global warming and rising sea levels and how the Philippines being an archipelago will surely be affected I decided that for maximum impact these had to be contained in bottles from the Philippines.

I knew that such bottles were available here. I had seen them before. What I wasn't sure was whether they were really going to be bottled in the Philippines or in Hong Kong or Spain. I had also seen such bottles from previous travels.

To my most pleasant surprise they were indeed bottled in the Philippines. This was the 'aha' moment that convinced me that I was going in the right direction with this piece.

Since the bottles had to be empty to accommodate the notes with the messages, I proceeded to empty them upon arriving home. In the best way I knew how.

This also provided me the opportunity for label and language checking. Checking my progress with the language, it turned out, that is. I had to spot where the translation had tripped.

I passed my test. I spotted all the mistakes.

The first one was easy. Premium Lager is translated into Lager Premiere, meaning first beer which does not technically translate into premium. The correct translation would be Lager de Premiere Classe.

The next two mistakes were grammatical. A matter of verbs in French called the Passe Compose. A matter of an additional e at the end of the verb, which for the most part is preceded by an accented e.

And this after a whole sentence describing flavor is not translated at all.

So, a barely passing grade for San Miguel Beer.

But, since flavor needs no translation, SMB still gets my thumbs up. Unfortunately, the translation that is most understood here is not French but Econospeak and in this language Premium Lager translates into expensive.

SMB is clearly not your hockey night drinking companion.

Still, as I was collecting the bottles after my performance piece I could only retrieve one of the the four I released. Clearly the bottles attracted some interest. Someone admitted to encouraging somebody else to keep what he said was a classic collectible.

It is often counseled not to shoot the messenger if the message is not good news. In this case the advise wasn't just not to shoot the messenger, but better: keep it.