After years of air travel, I’ve basically developed a deaf ear for the presentation of in-flight instructions that they have to play before every take-off, as I know every little detail by heart.
Anyway this time travelling to London aboard an Air France flight, I found myself listening to this weird recording of the in-flight instructions in Arabic.
It’s not that it was in Arabic that shocked me, that’s only normal as it’s a flight to/from an Arab country. What I found weird was how it was recorded in a broken Arabic language mixed with a certain North African accent, that made it both sort of funny and somehow unprofessional.
I mean Air France is a worldwide carrier, that has many flights to and from the Arab world; couldn’t they have found someone better to record well-formed, well-structured, well-pronounced Arabic in-flight instructions?
I know I’m being a bit too picky and that it’s good they have Arabic instructions in the first place, but well it’s a bit Amateurish for such a big airline company, and if they’re doing it, they might as well do it right.
Just my 2 cents…
the bottom line is to get the message accross to the ‘average’ passenger especially when it comes to their safety, not all citizens of north africa speak textbook arabic. As a matter of fact those born during the occuptation hardly understand any professional arabic, and mixing the message with local dialect is not a bad idea.
Cheers
i’ve noticed that on different flights as well.
Greetings,
If some part of our people can not understand proper/classic Arabic we not do not solve the problem by using improper or common dialect for the whole community/audieance!!!… Remember this is our laguage and we need to be a little more sensitive about it .. we can instead work on helping these people better understand it … I wonder how Eglish-speaking people (mainly Americans) would take it if their airlines start using westside/hiphop slang in their announcements, or say southern rednick slang … it is both inappropriate nor professional, be it for respecting the language itself or be it targetting a wider range of the society as whole instead of picking one specific dialect … I might be repeating myself here .. but we should all know how sacred this language is .. the least to give it is some respect when used in formal/professional domains (mainly in the media) .. just a thought!
Peace out 🙂
Good remark. Actually, I noticed too on a flight from Paris to Casablanca that the Arabic instructions were given in Moroccan Arabic but by someone from the Levant, which made it sound a bit weird and funny.