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Newham Borough
Council Language Survey Urdu Speakers
Respondent
Characteristics
37 respondents were Urdu speakers; Table 1 below provides a general summary of respondent characteristics.
· Respondents tended to be distributed towards the upper end of the age scale, with over half in either the 55-65 category (24%) or 65+ category (27%). Very few are between the ages of 16 and 24 (only 1 respondent). Females account for over two-thirds of individuals in this group (68%)
· The majority of respondents specified either Pakistan (65%) or India (19%) as their country of origin, with one other stating Afghanistan.
· Many respondents have been resident in the UK for a considerable amount of time, with the largest groupings being the 'more than 20 years' category (30%) and '10 to less than 20 years' (24%), with the trend continuing down to only 2 respondents in the 'less than 6 months' group.
Table 1 - Respondent Characteristics Language
and Communication Skills
General Language Skills
Urdu speakers showed a wide variety of language abilities, with a large number of other languages also being spoken, including Punjabi, Hindi, Gujurati, Pushti, Swahili, Bengali, Kashmiri and Arabic. However, apart from Punjabi (6 respondents) and Hindi (5 respondents), none of these languages were spoken by more than one respondent.
Formal Verbal Communication
Respondents were asked about their perceived ability to undertake a formal discussion, perhaps with the Police or their Doctor etc. This question was asked in terms of both their ability to understand and to talk themselves, and was asked in relation to both Urdu and English. Table 2 compares the responses given.
Table 2 - Formal Verbal Communication In general, respondents showed a marked lack of confidence in their spoken English ability, and a reasonable amount of confidence in their spoken Urdu ability, with this being consistent across all age groups and UK residency durations.
However, despite this lack of confidence in English, respondents did not believe they would be completely unable to either understand or talk themselves, with only approximately a quarter placing themselves into the 'not at all' category.
With regard to Urdu, respondents are divided almost equally between the 'very well' and 'quite well' categories, for both talking and understanding.
Formal Written Communication Ability
Table 3 shows how respondents feel they can read and write in a formal context, again in both English and Tamil.
Table 3 - Formal Written Ability
As with many other language groups, respondents were less confident overall about their written ability than their spoken ability, and were less confident about using English than their own language.
As Table 3 shows, the Urdu speaking group were particularly uncomfortable with the idea of writing a letter in English, as 68% said that they would not be able to do this at all. This is consistent with respondents' perceived ability in Urdu, with many respondents feeling that they would have some difficulty in understanding (49% in total) or writing (65% total) a formal letter in Urdu.
Ability to Read and Understand an English Daily
Newspaper
Respondents also expressed a similar pessimism in their ability to read and understand an English language daily newspaper. Again, 68% chose the lowest option, saying that they were 'not at all confident', whilst only 4 respondents answered that they had any significant degree of confidence at all. Contact
with Council
Use of Council Services
Less than half of respondents (41%) had ever made use of council services, although those who had done so cited a wide range of reasons. The most popular choices were for Council Tax reasons (40%) or for unspecified Benefits (33%), with Housing/accommodation issues, Social Services, Education, Social Security and the Job Centre also being mentioned by one or two respondents.
One would expect that the chances of a respondent having used council services would increase with the amount time they had spent living in the UK. However, the results appear to show that this is not the case for the Urdu-speaking group, although the small sample size means that this is a tentative conclusion.
Table 4 below shows how respondents rated the ease of their contact with the council, with regard to both verbal and written communication.
Table 4 - Ease of Understanding Contact with Council
Verbal Contact with Council
As Table 4 shows, many respondents expressed some difficulty in understanding their verbal contact with the council. Only 13% said that they had no difficulty at all, and these were all in the 65+ age category.
All except one of the respondents had face-to-face contact with the council, the other stating that a GP spoke on their behalf. Only 2 were not offered an option to use an interpreter, and both of these felt that this would have been useful. Of those who were offered an interpreter, the majority said that this helped them to 'mostly' understand (69%) or 'fully' understand (31%).
Most respondents said that when visiting council offices, they go alone (40%) or take a friend (33%), with one or two saying that they took a family member, social worker or interpreter.
Written Contact with Council
With regard to written contact, responses showed a similar pattern to verbal contact, although more respondents said that they had 'great difficulty' (27% compared with 13% for verbal contact). 60% felt that a translation of the written contact would have helped, although this still leaves a sizeable proportion who thought that it would not have assisted them.
Communication
Options
Newspaper Readership
Only 11 respondents said that they regularly read a newspaper, and of these, the Newham Recorder (4 respondents) and Jung (3) were the only specified choices to achieve more than 1 reader, with the Daily Mail also being mentioned.
Broadcast Media
For both radio and television, around half of respondents did not regularly listen or watch any particular channel. Zee TV (32%) was the most popular TV channel, especially amongst women (of all ages), with B4U and PTV being mentioned by a small minority.
Sunrise Radio (43%) dominated the radio listenership answers, the only other choice being Asia Radio. Sunrise Radio appears to be particularly popular amongst the older age groups, with respondents who have been living in the UK for a long period of time, and again with women of all ages.
Somewhat surprisingly, younger respondents and males tended not to make use of Urdu language broadcast media.
Computer Ownership
19% of respondents lived in a household with a computer, although these were universally owned by people other than the respondent, and none of the respondents believed that they would be able to use the computer to access council information. Other
Sources of Information
Voluntary Organisations
A sizeable minority of respondents (43%) said that they regularly visit voluntary organisations, and between them used a wide variety of different organisations - 8 in total. Of these, Behno ki Milan was the most popular, although Etka Project and Sathi Day Centre also had more than one regular user.
Religious Venues
The group generally did not regularly visit religious places, with 84% claiming not to. Those who did either visited the Islamic Centre, or a Mosque.
Help and Advice
When seeking help and advice, most respondents said that they would look within their family or circle of friends (62%), with the library (19%) also proving popular. 13 more choices were given, but of these only the Local Service Centre and the Council Office were mentioned by more than 1 person.
Usual Information Sources
The majority of respondents derived most of their information via word of mouth (59%), although leaflets, in both English (27%) and Urdu (8%) were also quite widespread.
Possible Information Sources
With regard to ideas about providing information in other places, the most popular proposal was to use GP/Medical Facilities (35%), although again the Library was also suggested quite frequently (27%). Provision
of Council Information
Preferred Format for Council Information
The plurality of respondents said that they would prefer information in Urdu to be provided in the form of text translation (43%), although this was certainly not the overwhelming favourite, with telephone translation (32%) also receiving support. Audio and video translation were not greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm.
The majority of those who picked text translation as the best option said that they did so due to the independence that this would bring to them, whereas those who favoured telephone translation were positive about the convenience of this method.
Respondents were unconvinced about the merits of video translation, with 38% stating that this would be the least useful option, mainly because they either did not own a TV/VCR or because they felt that the content was not appropriate to this format.
One interesting point is that 7 respondents felt that text translation would be useless to them, as they are illiterate in their native language.
Utilisation of Leaflets
Respondents showed a similar lack of confidence in their ability to understand English leaflets as they did in their ability to understand formal English, with most believing that they would have great difficulty in understanding (51%). Additionally, only 35% of respondents believed that they would not have difficulty in getting somebody to help them with an English leaflet.
Urdu language leaflets faired slightly better, but even so, just under half of respondents (46%) believed that they would have some degree of difficulty in understanding. Respondents were much more confident about their chances of finding someone to help with an Urdu leaflet however, with over half (56%) saying that they could do this easily.
Table 5 shows a detailed comparison between respondents'
confidence in both understanding leaflets and in getting help to understand,
for both languages.
Table 5 - Understanding Leaflets
Table 6 below shows whom the respondents felt they would be able to turn to in order to get help in understanding a leaflet. In order to translate English leaflets, 46% thought that they would turn to their friends, whilst 35% believed that help would come from within the family, with 22% suggesting that they could be helped by a neighbour in their community.
For an explanation of an Urdu leaflet, the pattern was similar with respondents likely to turn to their friends (58%), or family (52%).
Table 6 - Sources of Help with Leaflets Preferred Options for Receiving Information from
the Council
The vast majority of respondents (84%) believed that the inclusion of information regarding an interpreter would be useful, although a sizeable proportion believed that the best option was to be provided with a fully translated leaflet. 38% believed that an English leaflet with a telephone number to request a translation was the best option. Summary Sheet - Urdu
· Sample consists mainly of older women, few young people.
· Mostly from Pakistan, some from India.
· Long UK residency, many over ten or twenty years.
· Low Newspaper readership, around half access Urdu radio/TV.
· Reasonably high level of household computers, although none owned by respondents - suggests that women (especially mothers/wives) do not have access, but other family members do.
· Sizeable amount regularly uses a wide variety of voluntary organisations.
· Attendance at religious venues is not prevalent.
· Information/advice/help gained via word of mouth from local community/family.
· English - Verbal - uncertain, many feel they can make an attempt Written - very poor
· Urdu - Verbal - good, most are confident Written - poor, high proportion of illiteracy/difficulty
· Less than half have utilised council services (for Council Tax/Benefits).
· Contact evaluated as difficult, especially written contact.
· Most verbal contact is face to face; many take a friend/family member for help.
· Prefer full Urdu text translations of leaflets, although strong support for telephone translation amongst those who find reading difficult.
· Suggest providing this information in Medical Facilities and Libraries. |
Base = All Respondents