Dumbing down of the public services

Once upon a time, an executive in the civil service, if he or she did not have a degree in a foreign language would at least have a pass at GCE 'O' level in French and probably one other language. He or she may not have been able to speak or write French, German or Spanish as a native, but they would certainly recognise a clumsy literal translation when they saw one. My generation must surely be as appalled as I was at the news that the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) issued its own translation of the executive summary of its Brexit White Paper into 22 languages, not by employing a professional translation service, but, it appears from cursory analysis, by using Google Translate. This exercise clearly stems from a paranoid attitude to EU institutions, even the highly-regarded translation department, possibly the largest of its kind in the world. It also shows ignorance of the linguistic expertise in most European capitals, where there are people perfectly capable of comprehending the original English text.

DExEU in its rush to staff up the Department clearly found it difficult to recruit and retain competent people  with the traditional qualities of civil service objectivity. One hopes that standards have not slipped as far in the rest of the civil service.