Air France Arabic In-Flight Instructions

After years of air travel, I’ve basically developed a deaf ear for the presentation of in-flight instructions that they have to play before every take-off, as I know every little detail by heart.

Anyway this time travelling to London aboard an Air France flight, I found myself listening to this weird recording of the in-flight instructions in Arabic.

It’s not that it was in Arabic that shocked me, that’s only normal as it’s a flight to/from an Arab country. What I found weird was how it was recorded in a broken Arabic language mixed with a certain North African accent, that made it both sort of funny and somehow unprofessional.
I mean Air France is a worldwide carrier, that has many flights to and from the Arab world; couldn’t they have found someone better to record well-formed, well-structured, well-pronounced Arabic in-flight instructions?

I know I’m being a bit too picky and that it’s good they have Arabic instructions in the first place, but well it’s a bit Amateurish for such a big airline company, and if they’re doing it, they might as well do it right.

Just my 2 cents…

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Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

4 thoughts on “Air France Arabic In-Flight Instructions”

  1. the bottom line is to get the message accross to the ‘average’ passenger especially when it comes to their safety, not all citizens of north africa speak textbook arabic. As a matter of fact those born during the occuptation hardly understand any professional arabic, and mixing the message with local dialect is not a bad idea.
    Cheers

  2. Greetings,

    If some part of our people can not understand proper/classic Arabic we not do not solve the problem by using improper or common dialect for the whole community/audieance!!!… Remember this is our laguage and we need to be a little more sensitive about it .. we can instead work on helping these people better understand it … I wonder how Eglish-speaking people (mainly Americans) would take it if their airlines start using westside/hiphop slang in their announcements, or say southern rednick slang … it is both inappropriate nor professional, be it for respecting the language itself or be it targetting a wider range of the society as whole instead of picking one specific dialect … I might be repeating myself here .. but we should all know how sacred this language is .. the least to give it is some respect when used in formal/professional domains (mainly in the media) .. just a thought!
    Peace out 🙂

  3. Good remark. Actually, I noticed too on a flight from Paris to Casablanca that the Arabic instructions were given in Moroccan Arabic but by someone from the Levant, which made it sound a bit weird and funny.

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