Five Nations Energy offers bilingual website (Cree and English)
Company launches Cree language website
Scott Paradis - July 19, 2007
A Cree organization has officially launched a version of its website in its native tongue.
Five Nations Energy Inc. has launched the Cree-language version of its website, which will run alongside its English version. The electricity transmission company is Ontario's only Aboriginally-owned company of its kind and it has had an English website available since 2000.
Making a Cree-language site available was vital for the company to more comfortably serve some of its customer base, a company official said.
"Many of our community members use Cree as their first language," said Mike Metatawabin, president of Five Nations Energy Inc.
"We translate our First Nation Energy Inc. newsletter into Cree and it was important for us to make the website available in Cree, as well. "We are always looking for new ways to get information out and improve communications with the communities and this new website is a result of that ongoing effort."
Metatawabin said the website, both the English and Cree versions, contains all important, up-to-date information regarding the company, its operations, as well as information about the First Nations communities it serves.
Some of those Northern communities include Fort Albany, Attawapiskat and Kashechewan
The project of translating the English web content into Cree was a first for Stephanie Hajer, communications advisor.
"It was a long, ongoing project," she said.
Metatawabin acted as the translator as the Cree-version of the website was assembled.
Because the project had a single translator the content from the English site became "bottle-necked."
But eventually the group was able to work through its challenges to get the site up and running.
There still is, however, a slight difference in the speed at which the two versions of the site are updated, Hajer said.
"Sometimes the translator gets busy," said Hajer.
"We don't want to hold our English (content) back."
Updating the Cree version of the website continues to get easier. Hajer said she has also become more comfortable with the language since she started the project.
Hajer had no prior experience with Cree nor the syllabics that make up the language.