The time Kriol went viral

Early in 2022, while doing my daily doomscroll on Twitter, I noticed Kriol becoming a topic of conversation. Excuse me, what? When part of my day job is trying to get non-Kriol speakers to pay attention to the fact that Kriol exists, I never expected Kriol to organically go viral! But it happened. And it wasn't cute.

Kriol goes viral

The story starts with Covid. In late 2021, the Aboriginal Health Council of WA (AHCWA) created a few short Covid vaccination videos in some of WA's main Indigenous languages, nobly wanting to make sure remote Aboriginal residents were as safe from Covid as urban Westralians. 

Made in collaboration with AIWA (Aboriginal Interpreting WA), five short videos appear on AHCWA's website - one with Mark McGowan on his own where he says:

Hello, my name is Mark McGowan. I am the Premier of Western Australia. This is an important message to keep Aboriginal people safe. You can die from the Corona, or get really sick. It's time to get the Corona needle, to keep people and country strong. The Corona needle will protect kids, old people, men and women. Many people around the world have already had the needle. It is free and it's safe. If you're worried, talk to your clinic or medical centre or go to Roll Up For WA on the internet. So go get your needle now and stay strong. Thank you. 

AHCWA also produced versions of this video in four of WA's biggest Aboriginal languages: Ngaanyatjarra, Martu, Walmajarri and Kriol. You can see them all here, under "translations". Each video sees the WA Premier standing next to that particular language's interpreter and repeating his English message from above sentence by sentence, allowing the interpreter to interpret consecutively.

McGowan and a Martu interpreter co-presenting a vaccination health message

Now, no one seems to have batted an eyelid after the Ngaanyatjarra, Martu and Walmajarri versions came out in late 2021. And the Kriol one had a quiet start too. That is, until a couple of weeks later when it absolutely blew up on Twitter and beyond. When I say that Kriol went viral, I'm not exaggerating. One of the most popular tweets led the video to be seen 1.2 million times! (That's about 100 times per actual Kriol speaker if you want to put in another, scarier way).

Polarised and ignorant (a typical Twitter debate)

Basically, it blew up when some of the worst right-wing trolls in Australia (and beyond) saw the Kriol version and decided it was "racist", essentially arguing that Mark McGowan's speech was just being repeated in English, but said in a different way but by an Aboriginal elder. The argument took hold and swept like wildfire.

This is the most racist government initiative I’ve ever seen.@MarkMcGowanMP had an indigenous elder translate his message from English to “Aboriginal-English.”

The bloke is sick. pic.twitter.com/VuP7cwPlPe

— Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) January 11, 2022

The counter-reaction was swift and strong too, with many people quick to add to the Twitter storm by trying to educate people about Kriol, pointing out that it's not just a variety of English and arguing that to not know about Kriol was ignorant in and of itself and likely belied a lack of understanding and care about First Nations people, culture and languages (i.e. kinda bloody racist too!). 

Scrolling through the to-ing and fro-ing, it really was the pits (and a good example of why many people steer clear of Twitter!). If you want a taste of both sides, check these out:

• Here's one of the right-wing posts that helped send the video viral in the first place: WA Premier deploys indigenous (sic) aide to translate English into English (Avi Yemini/Rebel News) 
• And this was one of the strongest counter articles attempting to dispel myths and ignorance about Kriol (and Aboriginal English): Aboriginal English - what isn't it? (Sharon Davis/Indigenous X)

The video even got onto international right-wing media and eventually even the ABC addressed the issue: More than 80pc of Aboriginal people speak Kriol or Aboriginal English — why is it still widely misunderstood?

Watching it unfold

Then there's me: a long time Twitter user who can be annoyingly opinionated on there myself, and one of the few people on there who actually discusses Kriol regularly. I should have dived headfirst into the sh*tstorm! But I didn't.

Woah, searching 'Kriol' on Twitter atm is making my eyes bleed

— munanga linguist (@MunangaLinguist) January 12, 2022

Firstly, the debate was toxic, polarised, ideological and too viral (very Twitter!) for anything I could say to be of much use. I thought 'this thing is crazy and awful but it will blow over in a few days' (which it did). And while I also considered that the right-wing ignorance on display could actually be creating real harm to First Nations people reading their rubbish, many strong responses like Sharon's article above, demonstrated real strength and I didn't need to try get all saviourey.

But I also didn't say much was because, actually, I could see some reasons why right-wing ignorant trolls were reacting to the video. Just not the same reasons they were throwing at the Twitterstorm. 

To me, the debate about whether it was English or Kriol on the video wasn't the main issue. Or maybe it's just a tiresome issue for someone like me who interfaces between the two languages daily so anyone trying to tell me they're the same language is just, well, denying my existence. Of course Kriol's its own language and different enough to English that English monolinguals don't understand it. To anyone who thinks otherwise, I'd suggest watching the Kriol episodes of Little J & Big Cuz and then try and tell me you understand everything being said: Little J & Big Cuz in Kriol - Now on YouTube.

The point being missed by pretty much everyone, I thought, was that no-one really took a critical look at the actual video. Because something about it did look and sound weird. But not related the dominant Twitter debate of: 'it's English (and you're racist)', 'no it's Kriol (and you're racist)', 'what's Kriol', 'see, you are racist'.

Rather, it was the representation of interpreting that let the video down and made it - and the people in it - look odd. It wasn't actually a good video. (Note that I am not suggesting that the people in the video - especially the interpreter - are not good at what they do, just that the video didn't succeed in presenting them in a way that made them look good).

What went wrong?

Mistake One - interpreting from plain English

The benefit of having an interpreter is and should be that the speaker (the person using an interpreter) has the freedom to speak how they would normally speak when speaking to a listener or audience who shares the same language. The work of re-coding and reproducing the words and message into another language is done by the interpreter. 

Premier McGowan's message, however, was already in plain English. Short sentences with simple sentence structures. No jargon. Very clear messaging. This is actually a great way for an English speaker to communicate directly with people who may struggle with English. But, it's not a great way to speak when you have an interpreter. Instead, speak how you want to speak and let the interpreter do the work.

By speaking in short, plain English sentences, McGowan gave the interpreter linguistic gravy beef to interpret rather than a juicy ribeye steak. And when the other language is already closely related to English as Kriol is, the result is even more unsatisfying.

Mistake Two - having both languages in the video

Mistake One exacerbates the impact of Mistake Two, which was having McGowan speaking in the video alongside the interpreter. Why was he there? For a sense of authority as WA Premier? That's a questionable choice when a lot of the intended audience (First Nations Westralians) probably don't particularly like or trust non-Indigenous leadership. 

There certainly was no linguistic reason for him to be there: it was a video for Kriol speakers, so we only needed to hear the Kriol. 

By having both languages there, English-speaking listeners get to hear the original message first, so that when they hear the Kriol, it's a message that's already been comprehended and you can then easily parse the Kriol and immediately compare and contrast the Kriol and English. With the messaging being not very complex, that comparison again becomes unsatisfying.

Mistake Three - poor production and preparation

The third mistake is more speculative, but watching the video it really doesn't look like the interpreter had the opportunity to be well-prepared and rehearsed. There are extended pauses. The interpreter is at times reading off something out of frame. So is she interpreting (which is oral) or sight translating off text? As a result of all of this her interpreting is not particularly smooth. 

My heart actually goes out to her. She's obviously a competent interpreter. (She's also the interpreter in the Walmajarri version which, notably, noone has ever publicly questioned its value). And as interpreters, we try to make people forget we are there when we interpret, not be the focus of attention.

I feel like the production of the video and (lack of) preparation behind it threw her under the bus and didn't make her look very good. The end result was that she became the centre of a viral Twitter sh*tfight, which I think is really unfortunate.

Ask an interpreter

As the Twitter drama subsided, my main frustration was mostly that despite MANY people having opinions, no-one seemed to bother to ask an interpreter about the video or think about it through the frame of interpreter practice. Through this frame, it's actually easy to find issues with the video. Avoidable ones too. The video isn't great but it's nothing to do with whether Kriol is a language or not. The right-wing turds who tried to mock Kriol were just that - turds. But I also felt that simple counter-arguments of 'Kriol is a language so don't mock it' also didn't address what didn't feel right about the video. 

So if there are any lessons to be learned from the time Kriol went viral, here's some suggestions:

• If someone thinks Kriol is just English with an accent or has no grammar or some such rubbish, show them some good Kriol videos like these or these. 
• If you are using an interpreter, do a bit of research and check up on how best to work with one. Working with interpreters successfully is not hard, but there are skills and strategies that help it work really well. One being that if you have a confident interpreter, you can speak more like your normal self, and not how you would speak to L2 English speakers when you don't have an interpreter
• If you're ever making a video with an interpreter, do a better job of it than this one - let the interpreter speak on their own (especially for Kriol) and give them time to practice and appear confident on screen. Make them look good!
• And lastly, Twitter sh*tstorms are possibly best worth avoiding