19
votes
A lawmaker representing Greenland in Denmark's Parliament was asked to leave the podium of the assembly after she refused to translate her speech delivered in Greenlandic into Danish
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Inuit lawmaker asked to leave the podium at Danish Parliament after speaking only in Greenlandic
- Published
- Oct 4 2024
- Word count
- 681 words
Extremely relevant portion (emphasis mine):
Love it when a colonial power refuses to do even the most basic things to accommodate the people of the state they exploited and mistreated. God forbid an Inuit person from Greenland be able to watch and understand what's happening in the Folketing in their native language just as easily as a Dane. But given how racist Denmark's own laws are, I can't say I'm surprised.
Sorry, I don't understand. It says they're allowed to speak in their native tongue?
The representative in question advocates for simultaneous translation -- this would mean having an interpreter translating everyone's Danish into Greenlandic as well. While this, in practice, wouldn't directly affect a bilingual person's ability to communicate in such debates, it highlights an inequality between Greenlandic Inuit representatives -- and any of their constituents who may want to follow the debates -- and their white Danish counterparts.
A Greendlandic Inuit who doesn't speak Danish well would be on fundamentally unequal footing in their ability to watch the parliamentary sessions compared to Danes who likely don't speak any Greenlandic. As another user pointed out, they have live translation into Danish Sign Language, which a much smaller number of people use compared to Greenlandic.
Giving them the principle of charity I can see why they may want it to be translated into Danish. If I was debating with someone about something, I would like to hear their argument in a language I can understand. If they are able to speak Danish, what is the issue with them translating the speech?
I think it sounds reasonable for a third party translator to be used. From reading a source about the event elsewhere, the parliament speaker objected to simultaneous translation by a translator for “operational limitations” link. It would be useful to know more what they mean by that.
Similarly, I understand the use of a written translation which is helpful, but again if I am debating something in person, I would rather hear it than read it and can see why it would be a barrier to debate.
Finally, I wonder if there are legal provisions in place for spoken arguments in parliment. In the UK, MP have parliamentary privilege when speaking in parliament. I wonder if there is anything similar in Denmark.
You mention how racist Denmark’s laws are. I am very ignorant to Denmark’s laws, could you expand on this point?
Other comments in this thread have mostly covered the rest of your questions, but re: Denmark's racist legislation, there was discussion rather recently on Tildes of a law that made it illegal for neighborhoods to have greater than a certain percentage of certain ethnicities. This would involve the state forcably evicting and relocating people who lived in these neighborhoods to bring the percentage back down. Notably this was not all non-Danish ethnicities -- a neighborhood with a high percentage of Americans would not fall afoul of this law, for example -- it was pretty clearly targeted at certain "undesirable" ones.
You might have put in the wrong link.
From OP's article it sounds like they wanted her to repeat the full speech in Danish again, not offering a translator.
The decent thing for the bigger power would be to allow them to speak in their mother tongue , whilst employing a translator to allow live translation; not making them translate everything themselves.
It would be interesting to know whether their own translation gets deducted from their speaking time.
They can have a translator and get double speaking time for this. She also speaks fluent Danish, but she refused those options because she wanted to make a principal statement on the issue.
Edit: I should clarify a bit. They are allowed double speaking time and are granted a monthly ~10.000€ for a translator, but I am unsure whether that would actually allow for live translation which seems to be the main point she wanted to make. There is already live sign language coverage, even though we have fewer deaf people in Denmark than people who speak Greenlandic. So I think she does have a decent point to make, but I don't think the parliament is being totally unreasonable here either.
It is the wrong link (that annoying website ‘feature’ of moving to the next story when you reach the end of the article)
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/3110501-greenlandic-language-debate-stirs-danish-parliament