1. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada Bilingual and Multilingual Outreach – lessons Learned from A Canadian Perspective Sharon Jeffers Environnement Canada/Environment Canada

2. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 2 My four outreach questions… 1.Did the public receive it? 2.Did the public understand it? 3.Did the public do anything differently because of it? 4.If the answer to any or all of the above questions is no, what did we do about it?

3. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 3 Linguistic profile of Canada 17.5 million anglophones (english is their mother tongue) 6.8 million francophones (french is their mother tongue) 5.3 million allophones –The mother tongue of 1 in 6 Canadians is neither english nor french

4. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 4 Toronto, the Tower of Babel Canadian style… Population of 4,682,897 2,684,195 anglophones 57,490 francophones 1,898,465 allophones The mother tongue of 4 in 10 Torontonians is neither english nor french

5. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 5 My four questions revisited… 1.Did the public receive it? 2.Did the public understand it? 3.Did the public do anything differently because of it? 4.If the answer to any or all of the above questions is no, what did we do about it?

6. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 6 Did the public receive it? Mother tongue neither english nor french? First choice for receiving information is usually our mother tongue Mass media not likely to help here 3rd language radio and TV stations Community or cultural organisations Through the schools, ie children learn it in school and bring the information home to their families

7. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 7 Did the public understand it? TRANSLATION

8. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 8 Translation, translation, translation Come share your experiences and learn about more effective ways to ensure the public has timely, accurate air quality information to make choices about how to protect their health. Venez la part vos exp é riences et apprenez environ des mani è res plus efficaces d'assurer le public a la qualit é opportune et pr é cise d'air l'information pour faire des choix au sujet de la fa ç on prot é ger leur sant é.

9. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 9 Translation, translation, translation Come share your experiences and learn about more effective ways to ensure the public has timely, accurate air quality information to make choices about how to protect their health. Come share your experiments and learn butt more effective ways to public ensure the has timely, accurate air quality information to make choices butt how to protect to their health.

10. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 10 Did the public understand it? A good translation is necessary but not sufficient because …. It is not just about the language: –Differences in survey results from Qu é bec –Does language define culture, or culture define language? –No word for jay walking in french –Advertising campaigns.

11. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 11 Did the public understand it? From a risk communication viewpoint are allophones more at risk?

12. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 12 Avertissements m é t é o officiels d'Environnement Canada Alertes/avertissements Î les-de-la-Madeleine 15h55 HNA le mercredi 25 janvier 2006 un avertissement de blizzard pour Î les-de-la-Madeleine est maintenu Le blizzard d é butera cette nuit et persistera jeudi. Ceci est un avertissement indiquant que du blizzard avec une visibilit é presque nulle est pr é vu sur ces r é gions. Veuillez surveiller les conditions m é t é orologiques...Et les mises à jour de bulletin.

13. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 13 Did the public do anything differently because of it… Already working at the community level just to address the language issue Social diffusion Use car less versus having a smaller car

14. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 14 If answer to any of first three questions is no, what did we do about it? Need some form of measuring the effectiveness of what you are doing to be able to answer this question Need to identify if the problem is due to language This is not a simple thing to do, cut yourself some slack If effectiveness of actions are high due to multi-lingual format, usually need to demonstrate this to get future funding

15. Environment Canada Meteorological Service of Canada Environnement Canada Service Météorologique du Canada 15 To have another language is to possess a second soul. Charlemagne Dankie/ Shukran/ Grazias/ Merci/ Meda wo ase/ Akeva/ Gr à cies/ Kinanâskomitinawaw/ tak/ Dank u/ Ogiwadong/ Danke/ Efcharisto Arigato/ Asanteni/ nandri/ Thank You.