Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 26 Nov 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Official Report 194KB pdf

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Scotland's Languages

Item 3 is the committee's consideration of Irene McGugan's amended report on Scotland's languages, of which all members have received a copy. First, I seek the committee's agreement to adopt and publish the report. Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

I am glad that people are happy with the suggested amendments and the little bit of revision that has taken place to the report. However, I want to suggest one more amendment to the very end of paragraph 124, which reads:

"To ensure the development of a satisfactory Policy, substantive research, consultation and reporting needs to be carried out to gather much more information than is currently available."

I want to add the phrase "on the specific needs of each language" to the end of that sentence to focus what we mean by the specific "research, consultation and reporting" that require to be carried out. We need to identify the needs of each language to ensure that any languages policy adequately deals with those needs and, as per the inquiry's remit, begins to establish supports and mechanisms to develop the languages in future. Is that acceptable?

Members indicated agreement.

I have two small points. I think that paragraphs 110 and 116 have been cut and pasted into the report, because paragraph 110 has a typo which is repeated in paragraph 116. I wonder whether that could be corrected before the report is published.

I am happy enough for the report to go forward. However, I want to put on record my dissent from paragraph 119, simply because it contains a commitment to increasing funding. I would like the conclusions in paragraph 122, 123 and 124 to recommend such a measure before I would support it.

We have to consider the issue of translating the report, which will cost between approximately £150 and £250 per 1,000 words. The report contains 8,000 words, which will cost £1,200 to £2,000 per language. If we translated the report into the seven recommended languages—Scots, Gaelic, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Punjabi and Urdu—it would mean anything between £8,500 and £14,000. I am not sure whether we will be able to secure the necessary funding for such a substantial budget. I wrote to the Equal Opportunities Committee on the subject, but its reply was rather non-committal. As a result, I have asked the clerks to provide this information for us.

A bid for the translation costs would need to be made to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. We are not sure what the funding streams are like at the moment. Obviously, as we are now in the final round of bidding for money, the pots are slightly smaller than they would have been at the beginning.

I appreciate the amount of work that Irene McGugan has done, which is why I think that we should explore having the full report published in all the languages. However, given the lateness of the financial year, I wonder whether it would be possible to consider whether a summary version that captured the essence of the report might not have a radical impact on reducing costs.

That is a helpful suggestion.

We should certainly explore the possibility of publishing the report in each of the languages. Given the fact that the report will be an important statement that has been well researched over a period of time and will deal with language policy and how we proceed with languages, it would seem somewhat contradictory not to publish it in the languages concerned. Publishing it in full should be pursued as a first option.

If the SPCB refuses that option, we will need to be content with the report being published in the three languages of English, Gaelic and Scots—which are the languages that the bulk of the report deals with—and summary versions in the other languages. My first option would be for the full version to be published in each of the languages.

The very question throws up some of the difficulties that the report seeks to address. The main difficulty is with the language of Scots. As the report mentions, there is a degree of debate about what constitutes Scots. Notwithstanding those comments, as Michael Russell said, it would seem absurd to have a policy document on languages that was not translated into the languages that it discussed.

The summary that Jackie Baillie has suggested may be the most acceptable route. By all means, we can explore the other route of a full translation, but I am mindful of the fact that the greater the translation expense, the greater the likelihood that the document will be open to ridicule. I would rather see the document be given proper and serious consideration than be subject to attack by commentators in the media simply because of the cost of its translation. Without making a value judgment on the submissions that people have made or on the work that Irene McGugan has done in the report, I would simply highlight that it would be disappointing if the cost of the report became the focus of people's attention rather than its content.

It will be a great pity if the report is not translated into other languages. I support Jackie Baillie's idea that at least a summary of the report should be translated. Perhaps that could be our fall-back position when we seek resources. It is crucial that the report be available at least in Gaelic and Scots. I understand what people are saying, but it is vital that we be clear about language. Given the fact that the report highlights a number of the issues, it would be a real pity if it were not available in Gaelic and Scots.

My only concern about that is that that might set greater store by indigenous Scottish languages than community languages. If we cannot have a full translation into the seven languages that have been identified, we should not have any translation as we would otherwise be saying that it is all very well to have a languages policy but Gaelic and Scots are more important than community languages. I would have some difficulty with saying that. In essence, that is what we would be saying.

By having no translation, we would be saying that none of those languages is as important as English.

I am not saying that. The Parliament produces all its reports in English as a matter of course.

All the signage is in English and Gaelic.

I can live with English and Gaelic. If we were to move away from the languages in which we have traditionally reported, we would be setting greater store by Scots than by Punjabi, which would be a dangerous road to go down.

The area of concern that you have highlighted is important. It is clear that there are people in Scotland—often first-generation Scots—who cannot read English. If they wished to access the report, they would find it difficult to do so if it were not available in a language that they are used to, such as Punjabi or Urdu. Therefore, it would be a negative move not to offer some form of translation of the report in every language. Not to do so would be to imply that those languages are unimportant, when some people would not be able to access the report without translations in those languages.

I have yet to meet someone who uses Scots, whether or not they are lovers of Scots, who cannot read English. Similarly, I have yet to meet someone who speaks, reads and writes in Gaelic who cannot read English. I am especially concerned about those who cannot access the report. I return to the idea of a summary. It is important to treat every language as equal and to give people a choice of accessing the report, because that does not offer any view about the other languages. It is important for the committee to bear that in mind.

Given that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body has a language policy that makes much reference to openness and accessibility and that paragraph 14 of the policy's action plan states specifically that the SPCB will

"consider requests by committees to provide translations of their reports",

I would want the committee to consider seriously obtaining full translations of the report into all seven languages as its first option. An opportunity exists. Although there are difficulties, for example with end-of-year funding, the corporate body's language policy allows committees to ask for translations of reports. We should do that in this instance. If that is not possible because of funding restrictions, we should consider the summary versions that Jackie Baillie has suggested.

It is difficult to decide whether Scots and Gaelic should be treated differently. The report suggests that they should be treated differently because they are indigenous languages and because nowhere else in the world will uphold them. Punjabi and Urdu will never die out, regardless of what the Scottish Parliament does or fails to do in relation to their development. There are millions of speakers of those languages elsewhere in the world; that is not the case for Scots and Gaelic. I accept that it is difficult to get that message across while keeping in mind equal opportunities considerations. I would not want the report to be jeopardised by, or caught up in discussion of, any of those kinds of issues. We should be careful about how we proceed. I suspect that we will get seven summaries of equal status.

That said, I accept Mike Russell's point that the corollary to that is that English is the most important of all the languages, because that is the one in which the full report appears. That is also a difficult message to convey, as the focus of the report has been how to support and develop all the other languages that there are in Scotland.

I appreciate Irene McGugan's argument, but it must also be said that Scots is alive and kicking in our communities. Our bairns are growing up speaking Scots, but the majority of Scots cannot read Scots or do not have the opportunity to do so. Producing the report in Scots would be a wonderful way of progressing that issue. However, I am prepared to go with the proposal.

I would like to commend the reasoned way in which Irene McGugan spoke about the issue. The report should be published in full in all seven languages or a summary should be published in all seven languages.

Should there be a summary in English as well?

Yes, indeed.

We already have the full version in English.

I understand that; nevertheless, there should be a summary version in all seven languages. That is the way to go.

There is no translation fee for that.

We may have to write the summary in English, so that it can be translated, so we would have a summary version in English. It would not be a big deal to make that accessible. Members of the public may not read an 8,000-word report, but they may read a 1,000-word report. The issue is also about accessibility.

Without a doubt, there will be a bit of outrage in the Scots and Gaelic communities that the committee's first substantive report on their languages is not in their own languages. I suspect that there are many people in the Scots and Gaelic communities, many of whom are members of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on the Scots language and the cross-party group on Gaelic in the Scottish Parliament, who will willingly translate the report for a fraction of the cost that the SPCB seems to feel is the going rate for translation, simply to get it into those languages. I accept that we could do that for Scots and Gaelic but that we do not have a comparable situation for the other languages, which still leaves me with a problem, but we ought to try to get the report into Scots and Gaelic.

I will try my utmost, I assure you.

We are in danger of going round and round the issue. It is quite clear that the convener will go and argue for the resources to be made available to translate the report into all languages in full. However, we have to be pragmatic. If the resources are not available, are we not going to have it translated at all, or is there a reserve position? Having it translated in summary version across all the languages is the right way to proceed. Once it is published, if we have to go for plan B—where members of the cross-party groups on Scots and Gaelic stay up to do the translation and do what they will with it—that is fine.

I accept that, except that Gaelic is dying of pragmatism. I will not move against the proposal, but there requires to be a commitment. The report does differentiate, difficult as it is, between Scots and Gaelic and the other languages. Frankly, my view is that the Parliament should publish everything in Gaelic, Scots and English, but then I am no longer a pragmatist on these matters; I am a radical, because I have seen what pragmatism does—it destroys the language.

I am glad to see that you have developed your radical streak, Mr Russell. I will do my utmost to secure the necessary funding for translation into seven languages, but if I cannot, we should translate the summary into seven languages. I ask Irene McGugan and the clerk to get things together in a way that can be turned round quickly so that we can do that if necessary.