Angel Djambanski does not believe that Bulgarian identity cards should feature the English language. Djambanski, of whom you may not have heard, is a member of VMRO, the nationalist party that in recent years has been pushed further into obscurity by the somewhat more virulent brand of ultra-nationalism offered by Ataka. But now that Ataka has gone all cow-eyed over Boiko Borissov, VMRO is fighting for attention, and as a populist issue has picked, of all things, the humble lichna karta.
Bulgarian identity documents, Djambanski said, should feature only Bulgarian. Having English on them had a "colonial twang" (surely that would be the case if the second language was Turkish? Oh, never mind, I have long since learnt never to expect too much in the way of logic from loony right-wingers). He conceded that he did not mind transliteration, but did not want it to be English.
In any case, Bulgaria was alone in the European Union in having a foreign language on its identity documents, he said, clearly emboldened by not having wasted any time on research before making that statement.
Let me help. Leaving aside those EU countries that have no national identity document (Denmark, the UK), those that do but do not require them to be carried at all times (Sweden), most EU countries’ cards are multilingual.
Romanian cards have three languages, the additional two being English and French; Greece, two, the other one being English; Poland, two, the other one – English; Germany, three, with English and French; the Netherlands, two, with English.
Yes, there is France, solely with French; but then there is Belgium, with four, including English; no wonder Belgium produced the first European Council President.
Those are the facts, but what about the principle? As Bernard Levin wrote of Lord Longford, in paraphrase: "Everybody asks the wrong question, viz, is he barmy? The question is not worth asking. Of course he is barmy. What we should be discussing is, is he right?"
Practically, no. Bulgarian identity documents are now accepted as travel documents within the EU, and it would hardly be practical to expect officials in other EU states all to be able to read Cyrillic script and understand Bulgarian (the nearest equivalent, Greece, presumably uses English on its cards because it does not expect everyone outside its borders to understand Greek).
Then again, the problem is not just translation; it is also transliteration. My wife’s Bulgarian national passport says that she is someone called Mrs Levieva-Soyar (the result of a transliteration into Bulgarian and back into English; it would have been simpler to just type in what she had written on the application form); the result is that when we travel together, we boast passports with substantially different spellings of the latter half of our double-barrelled surname.
Perhaps Djambanski would prefer South Africa’s compromise solution in issuing driving licences. The country has 11 official languages, and a number of other languages that the language board should "promote and have respect for" – these, if you must know, include German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu; and Arabic, Hebrew and Sanskrit.
Driving licences automatically feature English, for the convenience of officials when they are used abroad. The user then has the option of specifying which other language may be featured, or can allow the computer to choose, randomly. When I got my new-style driving licence issued in 2001, I decided that rather than make a choice, I would try pot luck. The result is that I have a driving licence in English and, of all things, Portuguese (in hindsight, I would have preferred Zulu or Xhosa, much more of a conversation piece when living in Europe).
So if Djambanski really does not want English as the standard alternative, he need only advocate a computer programmed with (a) all other EU languages (b, and just for fun) all other languages. Or, unless he can find something sensible to say, he needs to learn something that is true in any language – that silence is golden.
:Article Source:sofiaecho.com
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