FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - What does it take for FA to be Language Qualified?
Old Jul 17, 2011 | 11:50 pm
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ORDnHKG
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Originally Posted by username
So, I wonder:

1 - what does it take for a US-based UA FA to qualify for a foreign language?
2 - how do they decide who makes the announcement onboard? (You would think the one who speaks the most fluently does but I am sure that is not the way.)
3 - do they make any consideration for dialects/accents of the various languages?
4 - do the have scripts for the standard announcements in the applicable foreign languages/dialects?

Thanks.
Are you an American that able to speak Mandarin ? Or are you an Native mandarin speaker that born and raised in Taiwan or mainland China ?

To me, as an Hong Kong borned and raised chinese, the most troublesome is the menus, not the announcement. I have found all menus from all airlines except CX has the correct translation to chinese traditional for flights going into HKG. The translation looks as if it is chinese traditional as in writing, but it is actually chinese simplified, just like icecream should be 雪糕 instead of 冰淇淋, and salad should be 沙律 instead of 沙拉. There are many more examples with the menus.

Since there are confusion with the menus, I would expect there are many of these translation hickups on the script that the language FA read on the announcement. Some FA will just read whatever on the script without using their own common sense.
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