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Many people are surprised when it is pointed out that in the insular Caribbean English speakers are outnumbered by Spanish speakers in a ratio of almost four to one; and also by French or at least Creole speakers. In the Greater Caribbean Anglophones are only 3 percent of the population.  If English speakers often overlook this awkward fact, it may be because at official meetings Anglophone states are in the overwhelming majority in CARICOM and CARIFORUM and account for nearly half of the total number of delegations in the ACS[10]. In addition, there is the fact that in the world as a whole English has become the lingua franca of diplomacy, international business and the Internet. As a general rule English speakers don’t have to make the effort to learn other languages, and when necessary they rely on translation and interpretation services.

We need to take into account, however, that language is a carrier of culture and that the subtleties of meaning are often lost on a literal translation. Moreover as anyone with some experience in international meetings knows, there is a world of difference between a good translation and a bad translation. When I took office in the ACS one of my promises was to try to “build bridges” among the various language groups in the association. We discovered to our embarrassment that the French translation of my speech had me building “breaches”.

Note: CARICOM includes Haiti, which is slightly more than one-half of the population of this group

Somebody once suggested that technology could help, and referred me to an Internet website offering free text translation services using a computer programme. I tried it, but took the precaution of running a sample passage through the programme in both directions, first from English into Spanish and then from the Spanish translation back into English, to see how much of the original English meaning had been preserved. I was interested to find that my reference to “the private sector of the Caribbean basin” had been translated into the Spanish equivalent of “the deprived sector of the Caribbean washbasin”.

There is also the fact that in any country much of the really valuable information on politics, business and culture is available only in the native language: in newspapers, in books, in reports and in its popular culture. To understand a country’s language is the key to understanding the way the people behave and think and view the world. From this point of view the dominance of the English language actually becomes a disadvantage to English speakers, who are generally not forced to learn other languages—others may come to understand more about us than we of them.

The lesson is clear—the real effort in this area needs to come from the Angloparlantes. In fact there is a great interest in learning Spanish among in the English speaking Caribbean--my information is that the classes offered by this institute are regularly oversubscribed. A similar situation obtains in Jamaica. Perhaps there is scope for more private sector involvement in language training to meet the excess demand. Immersion courses in Spanish for English speakers also do very well in places like Colombia, Mexico and Costa Rica. At the ACS, we have a project for the development of a common curriculum for the teaching of the main regional languages in educational institutions. I believe myself that this approach will take a long time to show results in actual language facility for people who need it the most—young people, businesspeople, officials in governments, official agencies and NGOs. What we do need is a great deal more immersion courses targeted at these groups.

My impression is that we English speakers have an unnecessary phobia about learning foreign languages, especially as we tend to associate this with formal education and the taking of examinations.  I was talking about this issue in an interview with a journalist on a recent visit to St Maarten, when he related to me the following. His mother had never finished primary school but spoke more languages than he did, though a University graduate. She spoke Spanish because she was born in the Dominican Republic, French because she lived in French St Martin and had attended school there, Papiamento and Dutch because she sold produce on the Dutch side of the island, and English because, in his words, “its her native language”--her parents had been from St Kitts.

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