About these long multilingual forms. They are surely a waste of money and postage.
I propose we stop sending out forms written in multiple languages. Instead give out English only forms but I think what we might need is a symbol. One universal, non-language symbol to put next to a phone number on any government form (or maybe not only government forms?) and a form ID number beside it. The symbol is only to identify to any language reader that this is the special language phone number out of a page of what is, to them, gibberish because it’s all English. The symbol is the same on all forms, the form ID of course changes.
Yes, one could just hand out the phone number, but people will lose it over time and maybe not have the language skills to ask for it again. Whereas a unique, recognizable Symbol in a pile of gibberish will help people navigate to the correct number, when there might be many numbers to choose from.
It works like this: a foreign speaker is given a form in English. They can’t understand the form, but they see the symbol beside a phone number. They know to go call the number and say “German” or “Kurdish” or whatever it is they need. If they haven’t said a language, the computer starts listing : “do you speak Japanese?” (said in Japanese), “do you speak French” said in French, and so on, until they select a language. The computer then changes to the language requested and gives prompts for the client to give the form ID number next to the symbol and their mailing address. The requested form is then mailed to them in their language.
People who are new residents will be going through government channels and that’s when they can be introduced to that symbol. They’ll be filling out many forms as a new resident/new citizen and they’ll learn a unique symbol easier than the English.
Also, in government offices they could put up one of those large stickers in multiple languages with the symbol on it with brief instructions in several languages to remind people of how it works.
This ought to save a lot of trees, paper, and money, I would think. It’s a way to help people who have not yet learned the language (though they ought to be working on it) without having to have page after page of wasted paper with every form sent out to people who speak English, which is most of us.
(You do realize this is another free money-making idea for anyone who can put the business together to run the computer interface for the clients on both ends, form givers and form receivers, then sell the service to the government and expand later to the private sector maybe. You’re welcome who ever. Feel free to send me a royalty, though I won’t hold my breath.) 