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ziggy (25)

ziggy
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Journal of ziggy (25)

Friday January 07, 2005
01:13 PM

Legalese

[ #22619 ]
We got a report-for-jury-duty notice in the mail. On the back is a series of checklists to determine if you are qualified or unqualified for jury duty (e.g., don't bother showing up if you aren't a US citizen, a convict, too old, or hear voices in your head).

And this interesting qualification:

DISQUALIFIED: I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO SERVE AS A JUROR BECAUSE:

______ I am unable to read, write, speak or understand the English Language.

Um, yeah. That trumps the classic: Keyboard Error: No keyboard Present. Press F1 to continue.


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Legalese 6 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Someone who cannot read/write/communicate in English who lives in our society will noneteless receive mail written in English.

    They will deal with it somehow - usually by having someone else read it for them, telling them of the content (in their own language), and writing any reply for them (translating the reply into English).

    The keyboard message "Press F1 to continue" is worse. It communicates an action request while knowing that the recipient does not have the means to implement it. With the "no spea
    • spoken like a true english speaker. It says,essentially, "Hey, motherfuker, move back to fuckall wherever you came from if you can't read this". Move to a country like Finland where you have no hope of understanding anything in the least for months if not years, even after you pay taxes, and you might have a fucking clue. Until then, you don't have even the slightest. The same thing happens in every language. It's galling and humiliating at best.
      • Um, I don't see much point in trying to accept a person who cannot understand English to be a juror in a trial that will be carried out in English. Without adding enough extra information to voting registration to cause significant privacy concerns, I don't see how the jury selection people could hope to write their letter in the recipient's native language. So, they write in the language they they need for a useful response, and that 95% of the population understands. (Perhaps the notice that the origin

        • For most of the English speakers here who can't even read Finnish well enough to order basic foods from a menu, reading 'Minä en ymmärrtä suomea' from a government mailing is very unlikely. Of course, Swedish is also the second language but, yes, for English speakers, especially from the US where language education barely gets by for the primary language, most tend to take English for granted. It's not just the jury cards, everything is in English.

          Why would I be upset at the Finns speakin

    • Huh? Just because the PC didn't detect a keyboard doesn't mean there is no keyboard. It may simply be that the connector was a little loose, or something.
      • Yes, I overstated it a bit. But what proportion of the time when the "Press F1..." message comes along will the reader actually be able to usefully press F1. Now compare that to the proportion of the time that a jury selection letter goes to a non-English speaker who is nonetheless able to return the later having checked the box that admits being incapable of working in English. So, does this second situation "trump" the first (as an example of oxymoronic catch-22 speak)?
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