>

Their website has the apology letter on the front page. 
They are a "small, woman- and minority-owned business", so they had to go outside their own agency to find translators. Being based in Berkeley I'm also suspecting they had to find these translators over the internet and phone.
IDK what their search process was like but they got hoodwinked bad. If I was them the first people I would have asked to find a translator for Iñupiaq and Yup’ik would have been state and local government officials in Alaska. Presumably they have to make documents in both English and those languages all the time, so they must have translators.
If they did their due process and still got bamboozled like that, it's truly unfortunate for them.
“Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing,” read one passage. The translator randomly added the word “Alaska” in the middle of the sentence.
“Your husband is a polar bear, skinny,” another said. >

A moose once bit my sister. >

My hovercraft is full of eels! >

I will not buy this tobacconists: it is scratched! >

Drop your panties Sir William, I must have you >

"Drop your panties Sir William, I cannot wait 'til lunchtime!"
FTFY >

My nipples explode with delight! >

My robe and wizard hat. >

At one time, there was a road sign in Wales with the information in both English and Welsh - except in Welsh, it said something along the lines of “I will be out of the office until $date, if you need assistance before then contact $person”.
Someone had e-mailed the English message to the translator, the translator’s out-of-office message was in Welsh, and the person who requested the translation assumed that what they got back was the translation. >


This sign at Asda in Cwmbran was translated as 'Alcohol am dimm ',  which means "Free alcohol"  instead of 'di-alcohol' for 'Alcohol Free'.

As a non native english speaker both these translations mean the same thing to me in a pub >

"Free alcohol" - the alcohol doesn't cost any money
"Alcohol free" - the drink has no alcohol >

Sure but aren't we one colon /pause away from it meaning the same thing?
Eh? 
Alcohol: free. Sets beer on the counter >

If you just capitalized "Uncle Jack" in the second sentence, then there wouldn't be any confusion without adding any comma. >


"They clearly just grabbed the words from the document and then just put them in some random order and gave something that looked like Yup’ik but made no sense..."

That's not even a "mistranslation". >

It's a word collage. >

Mmmmm word salad >

That story first broke on r/Scotland
It was quite fascinating. >

I like how all the posts from the last week are just shitty train stations >

Oh fuck.  I better check what my son is up to.
Edit: phew. Not my kid. >

Goddamn! People will try just any old ridiculous grift these days. That is outrageous. >

George Santos just announced that he’s a gay, Jew-ish, Latino, Alaskan Native. >

It's true. Back when the Jews were wandering the desert for 40 years, a few got very, very lost. >

Technically anybody can convert to Judaism but I won't believe it until his rabbi goes up to verify the Circumsision happened. >

It’s real easy. File a massive lawsuit for damages and delayed assistance and make the case very public. Let future cheats know what it will cost. This doesn’t need new laws. Just crush these assholes in the courts >

Form the article “She (the CEO of the transition company) said the company will refund FEMA the $5,116 it received for the work and conduct an internal review to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” 
Keep in mind that lawsuits need money and that there where no delays getting the disaster assistance according to the article >

Ah yes the owner, ceo and only employee is going to conduct an internal review on herself.  Right after her mom brings those hot pockets. >

Was this comment necessary? They're not a huge company, but far from a single employee. >

Nice try Transition company CEO. You don't fool me with your multiple reddit accounts >

Incorrectly attacking a company only builds sympathy for that company as people start to think the attacks are unreasonable.
Be accurate with the insults or you're harming the cause. >

Setting up reddit accounts doesn't mean your company has "employees" >

If you didn't catch on by now: your gag isn't funny. I'm not an employee, I'm someone who knows how to read an article and use google. This company has at least 9 people listed on their website, and I see 17 on their LinkedIn.
I hope you learn how to interact with people. >

"My hovercraft is full of eels." >

And conspiracy theorists think this agency is capable of running a shadow government. >

Reminds me of a bit from a book written by physicist Paul Davies where he speculates about alien life and tells about how he once asked one of his colleagues at NASA if he thinks the US government really is holding back the true nature behind UFOs. The colleague’s reply was simply “the same government that runs the post office?” >

"FEMA fired the California company hired to translate the documents"
Ahh the life of being a government contractor.  Win the bid and leave the rest to Google translate. >

They probably would have done a better job that way.  Looks like they just took some random text from a Russian-sourced language book, moved the words around and called it a day. >

Ah, the old Chakotay Lore grift lol >

Akoochiemoya! >

Firing them should be step 1. Step 2 is making them pay back every cent they were paid with interest.
Step 3 is fines & penalties... >

Step one is arresting them. Step 2 is booking.
Step three is the bail hearing. >

I don't know why this is getting downvoted.  They committed fraud against the government.  That's kinda illegal. >

People are against holding criminals accountable. >

As someone who has spent many years hanging with Alaska Native folks I dearly love, and who speaks some Iñupiaq myself, this is outrageous and bigoted and I'm glad they lost their jobs. >

They did not lose their jobs.
They are not in jail (as they should be), nor is the fema officials to helped them defraud the tax players in jail. >

The headline says they were fired. Is it wrong?  Ah never mind, I see the company was "fired."   
But one hopes that loss of revenue means they fire some of these cretins. 
Should have read the whole article. My bad. It mentions people I know! >

IT Crowd Italian scene irl >

Italian! >

oh yeah... massive brain fart on my end (i edited it) >

Why not hire a native speaker in the first place? >

This happens way more than it should. In an effort to include more medium and small businesses, they can bid on work without any past performance or expertise in the field. When I worked in the Federal Government, we needed a report done and decided to contract it out because, like always, we were to short-staffed to do it. We ended up selecting a soap company to do the work. I am not being facetious. Their literal main business was selling homemade soap bars. To make matters worse, we did international work and the report needed to include visiting the worksites internationally. They have never worked internationally and when it came time to travel they said they have never traveled internationally and didnt include it in the budget. We raised the budget so they could travel. All in all it was a $400,000 contract. $300K for the initial and $100K for the add on. >

Well this is much better than hearing twenty six years from now that FEMA knew these translations were dogshit back in 2023 but didn't do anything about it >

So this doesn't sound like the government's fault. It sounds like a company got contracted to do the job and they ripped the government off. >

You know what's nonsensical? Thinking there's one Alaska Native language. >

Seems to me the obvious way to get stuff translated when you're going to be there anyway, is to go there and find a native speaker who is also fluent in English. 
Way more common than finding some randos in California that are fluent in written Yup'ik. >

I used to have to travel overseas for work a lot, and twice we had "translators" that were clearly garbage. We were able to find locals to translate for us within literally 30 minutes of deciding that we needed one both times... Heck another time we had clients who did speak english, and we still put our waiter from the night before in a suit and paid him to sit in the room with us and tell us what our clients were saying to each other in Malay... So many people speak English these days that if you need a translator you can walk to any busy area and likely have 5 different people who would do it for you within 100 feet of you. >

I’m disappointed that they didn’t name the company. >

They did, if you read to the very bottom; it's below ads which make it hard to recognize as part of the article.  "Accent on Languages, the Berkeley, California-based company".