NationStates Jolt Archive


"Rezedents Rights & Rispansabilities": A Monstrous Government Cock-Up.

Neo-Anarchists
02-03-2005, 02:21
The document on this page was withdrawn and pulped by the federal government in 1999. Copies that went to federal libraries were recalled. If you file a FOIA request for it, you'll be rejected because it has been "removed from stock and destroyed."

Fortunately, a few libraries didn't turn in their copies, so this embarrassing document has narrowly been retrieved from the flames of the memory hole through the footwork of regular contributor Michael Ravnitzky.

The National Post (Toronto) explains what happened:

Several months ago the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, decided to produce a pamphlet in nine languages to inform immigrants in its subsidized housing projects about their rights and responsibilities as residents.

HUD asked the US Government Printing Office to handle the translation and printing of the work. The Printing Office contracted the job out to Thorner Press, a private company in Buffalo, N.Y. Thorner turned to Cosmos Translation Services in Toronto to translate the English-language document into Creole, so Haitians living in HUD housing in Miami could understand the pamphlet.

The trouble is that HUD never specified to the government printer that a French-Creole translation, common to Haiti, is what the department needed. Instead the brochure was translated by Cosmos into English-Creole, a patois common to Jamaica.

After distributing the pamphlet:

Complaints from Haitians to government soon followed. Some said they didn't understand the brochure, others asked if the translation was a racial joke.

[Source: "'Da Govment, Dem Scru up': US Government Fields Complaints Over Document Translation" by Richard Foot. National Post, 18 Nov 1999.]

Grab a copy of the pamphlet:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/hud/rezedents_rights.htm
Nadkor
02-03-2005, 02:22
Rezedents Rights & Rispansabilities
where did you learn fluent northern irish? :eek:

EDIT: this is actually a perfect Belfast accent:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/hud/rezedents_grafs.jpg
Equus
02-03-2005, 02:24
Whoops! That's what you get when a project is sub-contracted out multiple times. Like a really expensive game of telephone tag.
Neo-Anarchists
02-03-2005, 02:34
Whoops! That's what you get when a project is sub-contracted out multiple times. Like a really expensive game of telephone tag.
Hey, it makes it a lot cheaper though!
Neo-Anarchists
02-03-2005, 03:28
bump
Bodies Without Organs
02-03-2005, 03:36
where did you learn fluent northern irish? :eek:

EDIT: this is actually a perfect Belfast accent:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/hud/rezedents_grafs.jpg

You're right. Its Scots-Irish without a doubt.
Neo-Anarchists
02-03-2005, 03:37
You're right. Its Scots-Irish without a doubt.
:eek:
I think this means the Hatians are secretly Irishmen!
Bolol
02-03-2005, 03:39
What's the definition of a "cock-up"? I've heard of a f***-up...but not a "cock-up"...

Hmm...
Bodies Without Organs
02-03-2005, 03:41
:eek:
I think this means the Hatians are secretly Irishmen!

Nah, definitely not: one is a nation of people devoted to their own particularly twisted versions of Christianity who suffering from economic underdevelopment and have a scoiety wracked by political violence, while the other are a nation of people devoted to their own particularly twisted versions of Christianity who suffering from economic underdevelopment and have a scoiety wracked by political violence.
Nadkor
02-03-2005, 03:47
What's the definition of a "cock-up"? I've heard of a f***-up...but not a "cock-up"...

Hmm...
same difference
Anarchic Conceptions
02-03-2005, 03:48
Nah, definitely not: one is a nation of people devoted to their own particularly twisted versions of Christianity who suffering from economic underdevelopment and have a scoiety wracked by political violence, while the other are a nation of people devoted to their own particularly twisted versions of Christianity who suffering from economic underdevelopment and have a scoiety wracked by political violence.
Apples and oranges evidently.
Bodies Without Organs
02-03-2005, 03:50
Apples and oranges evidently.

On the subject of Northern Ireland:

Whats the difference between apples and oranges?

You don't get apple bastards.
Nadkor
02-03-2005, 03:51
On the subject of Northern Ireland:

Whats the difference between apples and oranges?

You don't get apple bastards.
an oldie but a goodie