PRESQUE ISLE – Four students in Professor Claire Davidshofer’s French for Professionals class at the University of Maine at Presque Isle just completed a translation project for the Northern Maine Regional Airport that will make the airport’s Web site more accessible to potential customers.
From now on, when people visit www.flypresqueisle.com, they will have the option to click on a button that will allow them to peruse the Web site in French.
This makes the Northern Maine Regional Airport the only airport in Maine to have a bilingual Web site.
“Northern Maine Regional Airport and the city of Presque Isle are very excited about this project with the University,” Scott Wardwell, airport director, said. “With the strength of the Canadian dollar, my Canadian traffic is really picking up and some of that Canadian traffic is obviously French-Canadian. To have the Web site in French and have some of our signs in the terminal in French is one more way we can make our airport more welcoming and go that extra mile so French-speaking people know we’re interested in having them as customers.”
The French translation of the Web site has been up running since early April.
It took Davidshofer’s students about two months to translate all the information on the Web site into French.
The students – who included Megan Linscott, Lucien Longlais, Laura O’Brien and Brad Patenaude – also translated two signs in the airport terminal. It was the original signs in the terminal that actually spurred the idea for the service learning project.
Davidshofer, a longtime French instructor at the University, said she was at the airport during Christmas break to bid farewell to her college-aged children when she noticed a French-speaking man who was preparing to board a flight but wasn’t sure what to do.
“He couldn’t read the signs and he wasn’t sure whether he should take his shoes off or what he should do,” Davidshofer recalled. “That started me thinking, this would be the perfect kind of project for my French 211 class to tackle.”
Davidshofer’s French 211 class focuses on using the French language in practical ways, and she tries to make it as much of a hands-on course as possible.
“So the benefit of this project to students was that they learned that French is something you can really use in any number of helpful ways, and, second, they learned how to translate,” Davidshofer said. “The structure of a French sentence is very different from the English. It was difficult at first, but they really improved. I think this was a great experience for them. And for the community? It was a great way to show that University work is something that can be used in the real world and impact the local community for the better.”
Photo courtesy of UMPI
Four students in Professor Claire Davidshofer’s French for Professionals class recently translated the Northern Maine Regional Airport’s Web site so that people who visit the Web site have the option to view it in French. Those who worked on the spring semester project include, from left, front row: Laura O’Brien and Professor Davidshofer. Back row: Megan Linscott, Brad Patenaude and Lucien Longlais.
