Lost in translation

Kyrgyzstan marked the 20th anniversary of signing the state language bill last fall. However, the Kyrgyz president admitted insufficient state support of the Kyrgyz language. As to the leader, other problems constantly pushed the issue to the sidelines.

As a result, the republic has a cohort of officials who do not speak Kyrgyz. Besides, the state language teaching at local schools comes short of satisfactory, specialists say.

Billboards visually demonstrate gaps in the state language policy. A person with good knowledge of Kyrgyz can not pass them by without a smile. It seems sometimes that the state language of our republic is not Kyrgyz. If there is any state agency, which is responsible for control over the advertising business?

The news agency 24.kg has turned to the National State Language Commission for comment. “Advertising campaigns constantly violate the State language law and we can only apply to them administrative measures which are not always effective. A recently-removed billboard will be soon replaced with a similar one,” Azimjan Ibraimov, assistant chairman of the commission said.

All the private property, including billboards, is protected by the law and their owners can not be punished even for the grossest violation of translation rules. “Weak legal basis does not allow punishment of violators. All what the state language commission can do is file a petition to the prosecutor’s office,” Aaly Moldokanov, advertising and translation manager of the National State Language Commission told the news agency 24.kg.

As to Moldokanov, the commission has already turned to the parliament with initiative to bring violators of the Kyrgyz language norms to responsibility. “Parliament deputies stood up for private property protection and did not support our initiative. We have been working on the problem already for ten years but only few people pay attention to us,” he said.

At the beginning of September 2009 a member of parliament, Beishenbek Abdyrasakov, suggested translation of all advertisement into Kyrgyz. As to the deputy, there are too many billboards in English, Chinese and other languages on the streets.

Therewith, competent agencies should pay more attention to translation of texts into Kyrgyz. “Billboards have not only unaesthetic appearance but plenty of grammar mistakes,” Gulnara Derbisheva, the deputy said.

More than a month has passed since the discussion started, but things haven't got forward an inch. Advertisement is still riddled with mistakes, as the lawmakers keep on discussing translation problems…