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Cinematheque: Mulan is finally Chinese again! (and other film news)
Lost Laowai brings our attention to the following soundbyte of a conversation between an Air China pilot and the control tower of the JFK Airport in New York. In it, the pilot fails to understand anything that the traffic controller was saying and his English was so garbled that he might as well have been speaking in Esperanto -- a language that is deemed so important that China Radio International's website has a version in it!
Now, like it or not, English is the international language of air traffic control, and pilots are required to have at least a basic mastery of the language. We are told by a friend who is a pilot with Singapore Airlines that whenever he flies to destinations in China, air traffic controllers here are always "trying their luck" by speaking to him in Mandarin, but Singapore Airlines pilots have been given clear instructions to answer back only in English to avoid any possible miscommunication and to prevent Chinese air traffic controllers from making a habit of "trying their luck". Imagine what sort of disasters could otherwise happen during takeoff/landing and even on the runway.
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Old news, release one month on CNN (not on the Chinese version, i think)
here a link about those communication
http://www.liveatc.net/feedindex.php
Also, YES, English is the only official language for air control, all over the world, even if some person still think that the control tower should speak Chinese to Chinese, French to French...
Chinese drivers, Chinese pilots.
nanheyangrouchuan
A clarification re "English is the international language of air traffic control":
It is not ordinary everyday English that is used. The FAA requires that a strictly limited set of 335 English phrases and 164 abbreviations be used unchanged - the ICAO also reqires a similarly limited set of phrases, not necessarily the same as those of the FAO and not necessarily using the same words.
If you are interested in learning about flying disasters caused by miscommunication between non-native speakers of English, then Google the phrase "Miscommunication between pilots and air traffic control" - the article by R. Kent Jones is quite an eye-opener.
Even requiring the use of limited English alone has not stopped communication problems and disasters from happening. The use of any ethnic language as an inter-language is clearly discriminatory to all non-natives. The rational and fair alternatve is to consider using a non-ethnic language, such as Esperanto:
http://esperanto.memlink.ca
China has taken a far-sighted lead in this direction and is to be congratulated not mocked.
There has to be some agreement on how pilots - and others - communicate internationally. It's obvious why it's English at the moment but that could, of course, change. If in 25 years' time the international language were to be Chinese, or Russian, I wonder how well English-speaking pilots would cope?
Rather than try to use a national language for international communication, it would make sense to use one which is actually designed for the purpose, and I would have thought Esperanto was the obvious choice, being phonetic and non-ambiguous. It's also accessible -check out the website www.esperanto.net
JFK Controllers are well known to be very rude to Chinese carriers. Cathay Pacific Pilots hear these conversations all the time thru their radios and they commented that the JFK guys are very mean to Air China pilots. In fact, most of the time, the Chinese pilots English is actually quite OK.
The truth is that English is a vey difficult language. We need an easy tongue for the air traffic. That language is ESPERANTO.
Marcelo Casartelli
Argentina
Native speakers of English (like the JFK controllers) seem to feel free to use all the vocabulary they want to. Was the Chinese pilot supposed to know the word "interrogative"??
There's already a whole book on air traffic control terminology in Esperanto which was written to solve this problem (by Kent Jones of Chicago).
Esperanto is like the "metric system" for language. It makes a lot more sense because it doesn't have arbitrary irregularities, and it can be learned in a tenth of the time that it would take to pick up English or Mandarin.
However, the aviation industry still hasn't standardized on Metric either. :(
The chinese pilots just don't want to follow the rules, how typical of bad china.
Esperanto sucks.
How's that for an informed, intelligent, well-reasoned contribution to the discussion, and complete with full documentary evidence too!
Esperanto? People, back to planet earth please...
As an Expat pilot based in Singapore I fly into China on a weekly bases. I can sincerely tell you that video did not surprise me at all. When ATC gives Chinese airlines instructions that are slightly outside the most basic norm it cause mass confusion. Just last week in Guangzhou we had to ask the Air Traffic Controller to repeat our clearance 4 times as his English was so poor. As communication between pilots and ATC is so important. Talk to any pilot that has experience dealing with Chinese airlines and they should be able to share numerous stories in which weak english has cause funny or dangerous situations.
And the good news! The ICAO- International Civil Aviation Organization will introduce a worldwide standard testing for English in aviation (truth is the test was made to target such communication problems in China and South America, partly explaining why we have so many angry Esperanto advocates commenting!). Expected to be out by March 2008, this will be a serious problem for all Chinese airlines. If the testing procedure isn't manipulated by authorities, airline ect... you can expect a huge amount of pilots grounded in China. First tip for the test- it's "clear to land" not "Queer to waaaand", good luck to you all!
Thanks, Expat pilot, for the additional personal evidence that there IS indeed a language problem in air traffic control which has not been solved just by declaring English "the" language. Thank God that there have so far not been more accidents than those already amply documented by Kent Jones.
Most Esperanto-speakers I know are interested in more than just band-aid solutions (such as the proposed ICAO test of English), but something truly radical, which will address issues as fairness, justice, cost-effectiveness, democracy, discrimination, endangered languages, in communication. Two things get my personal goat: 1) how Esperanto is continually dismissed without the evidence even having been examined. The language obviously works, as proved once again by the recently concluded annual 92nd World Esperanto Congress in Yokohama (which attracted 1900 participants from 57 countries). Did you read about it in the English-language media? (No, I thought not!)
2) being linguistically dictated to, and held in servitude, by native English-speakers (who are usually monolingual).
There - I've had my little rant!
The Prague Manifesto sums it all up for me:
http://lingvo.org/2/3
Who decided that English is the international language?
How is this decision in line with the respect of the Language Human Rights of people for whom English is a very difficult language?
English speaking pilots and air controller will understand the situation only when Chinese will be the international aviation language.
Yuo did not want Esperanto, now use Chinese!
Renato Corsetti
Try blogging in ESPERANTO, then, and see how many responses you get.
#12:
a) I decided English was the international language when I birthed the sun and moon from my generous loins.
b) You are a tool = Vi estas ilo.
Why is it so hard to imagine a heterosexual esperanto enthusiast?
But Esperanto is entirely based off European languages and communication patterns! Just inventing a new European language and calling it International doesn't mean it actually is - anyway why would Chinese pilots be any more fluent in Esperanto than English?
#13: "Try blogging in ESPERANTO, then, and see how many responses you get."
I blog in Esperanto and get plenty of responses. So do lots of other people. Try educating yourself before you spout nonsense.
#14: "Why is it so hard to imagine a heterosexual esperanto enthusiast?"
I've never been aware of it being difficult to imagine a heterosexual Esperantist. I think it is only difficult for homophobic trolls.
#15: "why would Chinese pilots be any more fluent in Esperanto than English?"
Because Esperanto is far easier to learn than English and other national languages. Yes, Europeans have an advantage remembering a lot of the vocabulary of Esperanto, but that doesn't imply Esperanto is just as hard as English. Esperanto was intentionally designed to have a regular grammar, no irregular nouns and verbs, rational spelling (English's spelling is among the worst of the national languages), consistent system for creating compound words, etc. I have seen first hand speaking with Chinese people that Esperanto is much easier for them to learn than English.
How do you say, "I am Sisyphus" in Esperanto? I think that would be a good phrase to learn regarding the relevance of your mission.
I bet four ziggion Esperantan pesaltoz that each and every fluent Esperanto speakers is as clued in as you are.
Sorry make that echt ziggion
Don´t think that the aviation accidents due to miscommunication between pilots (not only chinese) and the control towers are exceptions. There have been many disasters with a lot of casualties,and the cause were these misunderstandings. The worst accident happened in 1977 at the "Islas Canarias". The dutch pilot of KLM misunderstood an information from the control tower and crashed another plane shortly after taking off. There were 583 casualties!.
while I would agree that the chinese pilots could use more english lessons, I don't think that the english of the chinese pilots is the only disturbing thing about this clip.
americans are so damn provincial. they don't understand that 1.) english isn't the chinese pilots first language. 2.) the american accent isn't the only accent in the world being used and that a slight accent hinders the understanding of the word. 3.) add on top of that being transmitted over the radio makes it even more difficult to understand.
If the ATC was truly worried about safety, he should slow down his speech and try to enunciate slowly rather than get upset and use words like "interrogative"
I have stupid americans come into my office all the time to give training, and they all go at full conversation speed. You ask them to slow down, and at most they slow down for all of 30 seconds before they speed back up again.
I think the ATC needs training as much as the chinese pilots need training on english.
I've been thinking how one would translate 井底之蛙 and now I think I have it: goddamn rednecks.
#20:
More bitter expat trash.
nanheyangrouchuan
A colleague has just drawn my attention to an article "Misfunctional FAA Phraseology" by Kent Jones with some very specific examples of potential sources of confusion in communication between ATC personnel and pilots:
[a href]http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article351.html[/a]
I am convinced that native-speakers of English, especially under stress, would have great difficulty limiting themselves to the allowed phrases and constructions.
"But Esperanto is entirely based off European languages and communication patterns! Just inventing a new European language and calling it International doesn't mean it actually is - anyway why would Chinese pilots be any more fluent in Esperanto than English?"
So the truth is that Esperanto is a Euro-centric ploy to replace American-centric and Brit-centric english that dominates the world due to corporate and media influence.
Yuns jag-off slacker continentals.
If any language is going to become par with US and UK english, it will probably be Hindinglish due to India's growing global corporate presence.
To nanheyangrouchuan:
You are wrong when you write:
>Esperanto is entirely based off European languages and communication patterns
This might appear so at first sight, but a careful checking of Cherpillod's Konciza Etimologia Vortaro [2003] will reveal very many non Indo-European roots in Esperanto. And anyway, the words were selected largely on the basis of 'maximum internationality', because it so happens, like it or not, that more than 50% of the world (at the moment) speaks an Indo-European language natively. Eurocentrism has little to do with it. Read Piron's">http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm">Piron's article for more detailed info.
>Yuns jag-off slacker continentals.
Please rephrase this in normal standard English so that this native-speaker has some clue what you are talking about!
And by the way, the English phrasal verb is 'based ON', not 'off'!
@mansko:
Apparently you didn't notice the quotes around that phrase. I was quoting someone else. And the facts still stand that esperanto is a false, artificial language. Some computer languages have a richer and more organic history.
And just to keep you all up-to-date on communication problems with control towers due to insufficient English, here is another one involving Polish pilots with LOT, this time at London/Heathrow reported on June 12:
[a href]http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/news/article411652
3.ece[/a]