The UK Haringey council recently came under fire for unwarranted spending on its translation program after computer records showed that over one third of the translations it deemed necessary and spent tax money on were not read even once. With over fifty million pounds spent on translations annually, government officials began digging deeper into exactly where the money was going and their findings have caused a bit of a scandal in the UK.

Among the translations were a document for Gypsies translated into Polish and an FAQ on new secondary schools pamphlet translated into Turkish, Somali and Polish. Neither document was viewed once.

Community members spoke out against the waste, citing the fact that the money earmarked for the languages area, which totals over fifty million pounds annually, could have been spent on translating other documents into different languages or spent on ESL programs in London.

The subject of bilingual education in the US is a hotly debated topic, but news source are frequently unclear in their definitions of what exactly bilingual education is. The general public is largely unaware that there exist a wide variety of programs for students whose native language is not English and assume that bilingual education means a fifty-fifty split in their two languages. Neither of the two most common programs, English as a Second Language programs and traditional Bilingual Education programs, uses this kind of system.

The traditional bilingual education program teaches core courses such as science and history in the student’s native language, be it Spanish, Chinese, etc. English is also taught, but as a special course. Programs vary by state, but students in traditional bilingual education programs generally spend only a small percentage of their time at school learning English. These are intended to be temporary programs that provide students with a foundation in their native language before they learn a second language.

English as a Second Language (ESL) programs are also temporary, but are more of an adapted immersion program. ESL students also take special classes on the English language, but core courses are also taught in English. These classes are modified to the needs of the students whose first language is not English, but instruction is in English and there may be a wide variety of cultures and languages represented in the class.

These two programs are quite different, but the distinctions frequently get lost in the cries of xenophobia and the lamenting of the supposed deterioration of American culture.