FORCES PHOTO SITE SHUT DOWN

[Roy Harding]

From "COMBAT CAMERA" (National Post, 2007-12-19. Page 4).

I cannot provide a link as I'm an online subscriber, and read the paper offline - this article is shared in accordance with the "sharing" provisions of my subscription:

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COMBAT CAMERA

FORCES PHOTO SITE SHUT DOWN

BY DAVID PUGLIESECanWest News Service


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OTTAWA •

The Department of National Defence has shut down its Web site featuring photos of Canadian military personnel after receiving a complaint that onscreen commands used to download the pictures were not in both official languages and that information regarding the images was poorly translated into French.

The Combat Camera page, which contains thousands of images of Canadian soldiers, sailors and air force personnel, is one of the most popular sites on the Defence Department’s Web site. It receives between 3.6 million and 5.6 million page views each month from the public, according to figures supplied by the Defence Department.

But the site was shut down last Friday after NDP MP Yvon Godin complained the onscreen commands for downloading the photos were in English only and there was poor use of the French language in the photo captions.

The photos have information captions in both French and English.

The pictures, taken by military photographers, are used both by the public and news media outlets who want to illustrate various missions, in particular the ongoing operation in Afghanistan. The main Defence Department Web site is still operating.

In response to a question from CanWest News Service about when the Combat Camera site will be back up, the Defence Department responded in an e-mail that would happen “as soon as all the required work is complete.”

“The site will be the same except for the changes to make it compliant to official languages regulations,” the email added.

The Defence Department also noted the site was taken down for maintenance that “is also part of the day-to-day work performed to ensure compliance with all government regulations.”

Privately, Defence officials say they are concerned the site might not be fixed in time for Christmas, shutting down a portal for the public to see how the troops in Afghanistan are celebrating the holiday season.

Mr. Godin, a New Brunswick MP who is the NDP’s critic for official languages, said he never requested the Defence Department site be shut down. “I just asked them to fix it,” he said.

“What they had was terrible,” added Mr. Godin. “All the commands were in English. There was bad translation, words that did not make any sense.”

Mr. Godin, who represents the riding of Acadie-Bathurst, said he thinks the Defence Department uses a computer to translate material from English to French but such programs can insert errors. Such translations should be reviewed by department staff before they are put up on government Web sites, he added.

Mr. Godin said there have been similar incidents before.

Robin Cantin, public affairs manager for the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, said Mr. Godin did not make a formal complaint but asked that the Defence Department fix the problems on its Web site.

In its e-mail, the Defence Department responded that it decided not to keep the site running while changes were made since it “wanted to make sure that the site was fully compliant before we had it back up and running.”

Mr. Godin said he wants the Defence Department and other government departments to follow the law of the land in offering both official languages.

To be honest - I never noticed this, then again as an anglo, I probably wouldn't.


Roy

 

[Nfld Sapper]

Went to Combat Camera site and got this:

HTTP Error 404 - Not Found
Canadian Forces Image Gallery

The CF Image Gallery is temporarily offline due to technical problems. We apologize for the inconvenience. We are working as fast as we can to correct this problem.

EDITED

OK to be PC now

Erreur HTTP 404 - Non trouvé
Banque d'images des Forces canadiennes
La Banque d'images des Forces canadiennes sera temporairement fermée en raison de problèmes techniques. Veuillez nous excuser pour ce désagrément. Nous allons faire notre possible pour régler ce problème au plus vite possible.

;D

 

[Jean Gagné]

i'M french canadian and it didn't bother me, if it makes peoples unhappy they can log in some other site and stop pissing people off!

 

[Colin Parkinson]

How to encourage more anger between Francophones and Anglo's  :

Remove all captions and leave the pictures

 

[geo]

Well.... just another example of our CF masters overreacting again.

As the NDP critic from NB states, he pointed out something he felt was wrong AND asked that someone take steps to fix it.  So what does the CF do..... shut her down, tells everyone that it's been shut down because of the language thing and pisses off everyone!  Typical!  Stupid!  Imbecilic!

Same as when the CF had it's own forum.  In it's own way, the CF Discussion forum was this forum's equivalent .... some 6-8 years ago.... but they didn't have any moderators and there weren't any rules.  Suddenly, when young immature forum members made some inapropriate politicaly sensitive comments, they used any excuse to shut her down.

GAWD!  talk about a kneejerk reaction!

 

[Blakey]

"Suddenly, when young immature forum members made some inapropriate politicaly sensitive comments, they used any excuse to shut her down."

I was under the impression it was hacked? (wrong, or a combonation of both?)

As to the Cbt Camera site, give me a frickin break Godin, I've been to the site before and all there has been for captions is French, not too many complaints from the anglos about that.....whatever, slow day in Parlament. :

 

[midget-boyd91]

 “All the commands were in English.  

I wonder if the Mr.Godin noticed when he first went to CombatCamera, that there is the choice of which language you view the site in.


Welcome to CF Combat Camera,           Bienvennue a ......
             English                                     Francais


Edited for spelling on the worst possible word

 

[armyvern]

Went to Combat Camera site and got this:

HTTP Error 404 - Not Found
Canadian Forces Image Gallery

The CF Image Gallery is temporarily offline due to technical problems. We apologize for the inconvenience. We are working as fast as we can to correct this problem.

Did that error message also come en francais?

Kidding .... dammit.  ;D

Uncle-midget-clause,

M. Godin also noticed errors in translation within the french scripting on the site.

Better to fix it up properly. Hopefully they get it done quick ... that's another gallery that I love to visit.

 

[Nfld Sapper]

Welcome to CF Combat Camera,
Engligh

New language?  ;D

 

[midget-boyd91]

New language?  ;D

Your damn right it is.  ^-^

(I think I'll go edit that now.)

 

[Nfld Sapper]

lol thought so

:cheers:

 

[George Wallace]

geo

'And if they left it up over the Christmas Block Leave Period we would be facing the charges that we ignored the 'complaint'.  F'd if you do; f'd if you don't.

 

[Pencil Tech]

Shutting it down is an overreaction but there's really no excuse for lousy French text as the govenment translation services are readily available.

 

[Maclimius]

Unfortunately, not all CF members that upload to the the Combat Camera website are fully bilingual. Do they really think our members in the field have time to sit down and figure out the proper translation? Personally, I'd rather have access to the imagery in a timely manner rather than having to wait for the translation.

Do you think anything would have happened if the complaint had been that the captioning for the english translations from originally french captions are incorrect?

-French Translation to Follow- 

 

[DannyD]

They want to be elected, so they try to look good for the French-speaking population.

Losers... There are way more pressing issues to be resolved than another /$?*!"@ language brawl.  :brickwall:

 

[Roy Harding]

Unfortunately, not all CF members that upload to the the Combat Camera website are fully bilingual. Do they really think our members in the field have time to sit down and figure out the proper translation? Personally, I'd rather have access to the imagery in a timely manner rather than having to wait for the translation.
...

I think your argument would have merit if the Combat Camera site were a private site.  It isn't.  It's an official Government of Canada/DND/CF site - and BOTH official languages should be equally (and grammatically) represented.

Having said that - I DO think that shutting the thing down was an over-reaction.  As much as it hurts to agree with a member of the NDP - the MP in question was simply pointing out a weakness - he didn't ask for it to be shut down, he asked for it to be "fixed".

Perhaps a more acceptable solution would have been for the Combat Camera site to make a statement on its home page (in both official languages) to the effect that "translation is not always up to the minute - but we're working on it as quickly as we can."  Simple, addresses the immediate problem, and perhaps buys some time to get the French on the site up to speed - without depriving interested Canadians of some brilliant imagery.


Roy

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well we had one of our more senior officer in our field sit down with both copies of the same Act in front of him reading them line for line, after 5 minutes, he said  Oh Sh*t!!!!! these don't say the same thing!!! That's after about a decade of use....

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I just find it strange, that if the problem was as big and glaring as this MP thought it was, why none of our Francos have ever brought it to the attention of the Site Admins before. Not saying it shouldn't be fixed, if the problems exist, just that it seems like some self gratuitous NDP, "I need airtime" grandstanding.

 

[The Bread Guy]

it seems like some self gratuitous NDP, "I need airtime" grandstanding.

But I repeat myself....  ;D

I wonder if anyone will complain about the (once in a while) wonky English translations?

I concur with Roy's assessment - the rules say both languages must be there, but if they can't, just say, "we're working as quickly as we can to get you the other language stuff"....

 

[Maclimius]

Perhaps a more acceptable solution would have been for the Combat Camera site to make a statement on its home page (in both official languages) to the effect that "translation is not always up to the minute - but we're working on it as quickly as we can."  Simple, addresses the immediate problem, and perhaps buys some time to get the French on the site up to speed - without depriving interested Canadians of some brilliant imagery.

That disclaimer already existed on the captions themselves, ie. French or English translation to follow, but I guess it's not enough for some people.

I do agree that with it being an official Government of Canada/DND/CF site it should be in both languages, but at the same time we need to be realistic that the MSM want access to these images as quickly as possible while the news is still current.