MONTREAL - Those who want to cheer on the Canadian Olympic hockey team in
Vancouver in French this year will have to look elsewhere than the official
"Team Canada" website. The French that is on the site is littered with
mistakes and the promotional items for sale are in English only.
A search of the French version of the site found more than 25 errors, most
often mistakes in the translation from English to French.
Many of the errors are found in the new official Hockey Canada store
website, which can be accessed from the site's welcome page.
There are many errors in the names of the merchandise, such as using a more
colloquial term for "child" (gosse, which can mean kid, youngster, etc.)
when advertising children's jerseys in French.
A regular T-shirt (the English term T-shirt is acceptable in French),
becomes a "tee-shirt de Manche de Court des enfants."
Hockey Canada states on its website that the online store was created by
Vancouver-based Elastic Path Retail Inc., which was sub-contracted for the
job.
Andre Brin, head of communications for Hockey Canada and a Francophone from
Manitoba, said he fixed several errors early on and has asked for additional
corrections.
"But it's likely that other errors weren't caught and remained on the site,"
he said, saying the issue would be looked into. "I think that the
translation was done internally by people at Elastic Path."
All of the clothing or promotional items being sold through the online store
feature inscriptions or logos in English only.
Slogans like "Team Canada," "Proudly ... Canadian," "Hockey, it's our game,"
and "Go Canada" are all available in English only.
According to Brin, the decision was made a while ago to offer the items in
only one language because there wasn't enough demand for a second language
option.
"At one time, the decision was made to drop the sales of French products
because it was expensive in terms of inventory," he said. "The demand wasn't
there. The products in French weren't selling."
