BOTCHED TRANSLATION LEAVES RED-FACED OFFICIALS SCRAMBLING TO CORRECT
ANTI-MARIJUANA ADS

Arabic Message Written By Someone Who 'Definitely Doesn't Know
Arabic'

Public health officials are scrambling to correct the garbled Arabic
message in a poster campaign that warns against the dangers of driving
under the influence of marijuana.

The campaign, called "Don't Drive High," was launched last week. The
bright yellow posters, which show a montage of crash site photos in
the outline of a marijuana leaf, ask the question '"Why Drive High?"

The message is translated into French, Chinese, Somalian and
Arabic.

The posters are part of a two-year, $346,000 public awareness campaign
to draw attention to the ways in which marijuana affects alertness,
concentration, reaction time and other driving skills. Health Canada's
Drug Strategy paid Ottawa Public Health and Carlington Community and
Health Services to design and promote the campaign, which is aimed at
teens and parents.

But about five minutes after the campaign launch, two people who could
read Arabic had come forward to tell organizers that the Arabic script
didn't make sense, said Tim Scholberg, a health promoter with
Carlington Community and Health Services.

It's unclear how much fixing the gaffe will cost, but the campaign
organizers are correcting all of the 75 large posters on bus shelters
and another 425 posted in bus interiors with a "snipe" -- the correct
version will be pasted over the original. The error will be corrected
before another 600 of the posters are printed.

The posters are scheduled to remain up for about eight weeks, and Mr.
Scholberg believes all of the incorrect messages will be corrected
within the next few days.

"We're sorry. That's the bottom line," he said. "Especially when we
were trying to be as sensitive as possible."

The campaign's design team enlisted the help of 10 multicultural youth
advisers between the ages of 16 and 22 to help in focusing the
message. The idea was to speak in the language of youth, and the
translations were aimed at sparking discussion between young people
and their parents about marijuana and driving.

Mr. Scholberg said campaign organizers wanted to include messages in
Arabic, Somalian and Chinese because these are the languages most
commonly spoken in Ottawa's immigrant communities.

The message was translated, but translations can be quite tricky and
subject to interpretation, he said. In this case, however, he concedes
that the message was completely garbled.

"I don't know where it was missed. It was just missed," he
said.

Idris Ben-Tahir, chairman of the Islamic Council of Academics and
Professionals, said Arabic characters are always linked -- as in
cursive writing -- which is not the case in the poster.

Gamal Solaiman, imam of the Ottawa Central Mosque on Northwestern
Avenue and an Arabic scholar, said while he can make out the words
"life" and "danger," the Arabic message is written in such a way that
it is difficult to understand.

"The person who has done that definitely doesn't know Arabic," he
said.

Councillor Alex Cullen, the vice-chairman of the city's health,
recreation and social services committee, called the error "very, very
embarrassing."

"We've had tons of publications that have been translated into many,
many languages," he said.

Mr. Scholberg said he hopes the error doesn't detract from the issues.
The 2005 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey found that almost 22 per cent
of students surveyed had been passengers in a car with a driver who
was using marijuana. And a 2002 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
survey indicated that 2.9 per cent of drivers have driven a vehicle
within an hour of smoking marijuana -- representing over 200,000
drivers in Ontario.

"We don't want the message to be lost," said Mr. Scholberg.