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Comment by born2discover | Hacker News Reader

and having several languages in equal status would just be not practical - Sorry but I have to disagree here. Look at UN, they have Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish as official languages.

Why is there an absolute must to only have one official language? Why not chose several most widely spoken ones, including English, and let each speaker chose the one that suits them best?

I live in a country where we have 4 national languages and 3 official ones. Our members of parliament can express themselves in the language of their choosing and their speech/intervention is translated for the rest. That way people can express themselves in the language they are most comfortable in (that is often not English, unless it's their mother tongue) and that does not put older generations (who never learnt English) at a disadvantage.

Having one single language in a multicultural setting can be tricky.

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Because having multiple official languages adds more layers of bureaucracy to everything and amounts to a colossal waste of time and money.

We have this in Canada, and outside of Quebec, nobody cares about the French language. In fact, many manufacturers specifically avoid Canada in some cases due to the requirement to put both English and French on the packaging. All government communication has to be written twice. Government employees must have fluency in both languages.

All that waste, and for what? A language that nobody else uses.

You'd still expect manufacterers to put your language on packaging and for the government to communicate with you in it, I presume?

Yes, but without the requirement to have two languages on the packaging, you can have one design for both Canada and the USA.

Canada is a tiny market by comparison, so it's often not worth the expense of designing separate multi-language packaging just for them.

I would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it.

If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.

It's not just the words themselves; you need a completely different package design. It's not like in Europe where the package is mostly the same except for some language-specific section. In Canada, you need to translate EVERYTHING, including the slogan [1], and even the name in some cases. Every English sentence must be translated and presented in equal size in French.

You can call it good/bad business practice all you want. Real manufacturers do make conscious decisions to avoid the Canadian market due to these costs. The reality is that we suffer because of this policy.

There is one silver lining, however: Online retailers like Amazon seem to be exempt.

[1] http://blog.generalmills.com/wp-content/uploads/Honey-Nut-Ch...

I see! Then I do understand why you'd be in favor of dropping French as it seems to me that Quebec might be doing a bit of a protectionism dance there.

Where I live (Switzerland) the minimum to have is the information text translated (the one at the back). But the brand itself can remain as it is. Usually however, you do see a bit more translated, such as subtitles or things like what type of product that is, like "whole-grained bread" and things like that.

Also we're lucky to be in the middle of Europe, so companies that export to France and Germany tend to create one double translated product for both countries and it's imported to Switzerland as well.

But yea, if you force double work on the companies without any rational reason behind, then they might try to reduce costs by simply avoiding the market altogether.

I live in Switzerland where everything you've mentioned has to be done thrice (3 official languages: French, German, Italian), yet I am firm in my belief that it should be maintained.

It's not about whether anybody cares about a specific language anywhere outside of a province. It's about maintaining a language as one of the elements of the culture and country's identity.

If only criterion to keep or strike a language as official one was whether it's spoken by a majority or a minority, then you'd be living in a dictatorship of the masses (where majority decides for everybody else).

Learning a second or a third language is not a burden. It's an opportunity. An opportunity to immerse one self into a different culture, different world view... It should be seen as gift to widen one's perspective and not a financial burden.

And using the money as an argument against this or that is a dangerous slippery slope. Because with the same argument one could argue against a lot of other things: "Why maintain a universal healthcare, it costs too much!", "What? Maintain free education? Who needs that, it costs too much!"... And so forth, and so forth.

I do agree that multiple languages are a good thing in general. I speak English, French, and Japanese fluently, and am now learning German.

However, I also believe that bureaucracy should be minimized, especially at the federal level. And when it actively impedes the flow of goods and services (as it does in Canada because it's such a small market), you're throwing away far more than you gain.

EDIT: apparently I misunderstood the problem with Canada. This comment make less sense for this particular context. I still endorse the general point.

having labels in a language people can understand is not bureaucracy. Bureaucracy would be having to compile every document in both languages.

A problem with multiple national languages (I have small experience of this living on the border between Germany and France and medium-short permanence in Benelux) is that if you have to write everything in two/three languages there is no space left for English to accommodate tourists.

On the other hand, if there is already an translation infrastructure it can maybe be adapted to one more language more easily....

Quebec is big is population and land size so saying 'nobody cares' is being disingenuous. It's an official language so can't be ignored.

In benelux it is even more extreme, there must be German/Luxembourgish French and Flemish/Dutch. often there is no longer space for English :)

Anyway globalization need to be respectful of local identities. It is one of the tenets of a multicultural society. By insisting that population leave behind their local languages you are either fragmenting countries or cooking up a dangerous backlash.

Assuming nothing is lost in translation. Such a system is totally blind to this issue.

Curious, what country is that?

Switzerland ?

AFAIK Switzerland has 4 official languages

Yes, we have 4 national languages: French, German, Italian and Romansh. However only three of them bear the title of official language, that is, language used in official communications.

Romansh is spoken only in one of our "provinces" (Canton Graubünden) thus is considered too tiny to be supported on the national scale for official purposes.

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