I wonder how much the City of Toronto has to pay for the 64 or so languages they use for mailouts, etc.

http://www.toronto.ca/diversity/pos...lcome_large.jpg

Even though my city (and others in Canada) spend tons of money for translation services, my company still gets letters from people complaining their language isn't on mailouts (for some reason, some people think a newswire sevice is like a news agency so they call/email us to complain). What's the cut-off point here? Are we supposed to translate every document into every language in the world?

I've worked in call centres and have been in training groups with trainees who don't speak the language and am often surprised at how long they last. I can understand their need for employment but if they can't speak the language, it's just going to frustrate the customer, as gekkogecko showed.

Our sister company in the States has outsourced their Operations dept. to Bangalore and most calls are hopeless. It takes so long to communicate that I wonder how much money they're saving by outsourcing. The weekend before last, I had to give up on trying to get an answer from them because I just couldn't understand what the guy was saying to me. I got a call later from their Cleveland office asking if my problem was solved. How is that saving money, I ask you? Why couldn't I just talk to an English speaker in the first place?

There was a hilarious Call Centre Movie link but I googled it and it says the service is unavailable. It was awesome so if you're interested, perhaps try googling it again later to see if it appears again.