Promote all languages equally

By P.Sugumaran (Political Sec)

Many countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Historically, nations have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others.

MCPXMany countries now, however, have policies designed to protect and promote regional and ethnic languages whose viabilities are threatened. Language policies cultivate language skills needed to meet national priorities or to establish the rights of individuals or groups to use and maintain languages. Most companies in Malaysia are not multilingual in their business operations due to the company’s internal policies and the high cost of translation.

Since Malaysia is a multiracial country, it is always better to have multilingual systems in every sector as it will inherently lead the growth of every community in this country. Language does help the economic growth of a particular society. However, there are many hidden policies created by corporate administrators to avoid particular languages in Malaysia.

This can lead to disinclination. The current situation needs to be reshuffled. The government should advise industry players in every sector to provide multilingual information to their consumers, subscribers, shareholders, account holders and so forth. In Malaysia, services and products are not created for just one particular society.

They are designed for every Malaysian and for foreigners as well. The extensive use of only English in Malaysia is not going help promote our national languages which are Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil. It can cause ‘language cleansing’ in Malaysia.

It is really sad to see that most billboards are not multilingual. The KLIA has reached the standards of multilingual practice but Tamil has been ignored, a violation of the International Airport Standard. This situation needs to be rectified immediately.

Media agencies should advise their clients to practice multilingual advertising to promote Malaysia as a multiracial, multilingual society. With that, we can abolish the ‘class privilege’ advertisements and at the same time promote nationalism amongst all Malaysians.