Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Mad Cat Strikes Again

SINN Fein Education Minister Caitriona Ruane faced a fresh storm after instructing officials to send Assembly answers in Irish – even to MLAs she knows only speak English.

But instead of translating the entire answer into Irish, the minister has puzzlingly only translated one sentence – something unionists branded a “political stunt”.

The Department of Education confirmed that Ms Ruane had instructed civil servants to “include Irish in all Assembly questions” but a spokesman said he didn’t know why only part of each answer was translated.


There are two pertinent questions here; is it really necessary to translate such a reply into a second language when you know the person receiving the reply doesn't actually understand the language in question?
And if, for some unfathomable reason, it is, why then only translate one sentence?

The rather obvious answer:
Irish speaker Professor Bob Welch said that it appeared Ms Ruane was "making a point".
"In normal society, we don’t use language to annoy people but the arena at Stormont is a political arena, not a normal one," he said.

Rather than continuously "making a point" and consequently causing even more damage to the cause of the Irish language, it's now time that Mad Cat got round to dumping the sixth-form style "activism" and realising that she is in a real position of real responsibility which requires real decisions which affect real children.

3 comments:

Owen Polley said...

I like the hint of absolute contempt in Welch's comment.

Owen Polley said...

Has anyone considered that Ruane has just gone "fuck it - how bad a minister can I possibly be?".

O'Neill said...

Or that she's flipped under the pressure of having Sammy Wilson as her controller?