melancholy diary
twelve o’clock, June 26, 2021 – 09:17 am
of Diego De Silva placeholder image
Il bureaucratese a language we have all had to deal with at times; and it never happened (but never) that even just one of these times we didn’t end up throwing yards, frustrated by the ambiguity of expressions that seemed conceived for the express purpose of intoxicating the day.
Why this premise? Here’s why: I receive an email informing me that the Covid-19 green certification is available, which I can receive with a dedicated code. Nice, I think. I go to the site indicated in the email, enter the code and the number of the health card. But look, easy, I tell myself. Then I get to the bottom of the page and look for a box where I can click to continue the procedure. Not C’. I look better. I go back up, then down again. Nothing. I repeat the operation. Card number, code. I go back down. This time a virtual button appears, where it says: Retrieve certification.
I stall. Recover? But recover what? For a moment the chewing-gum paper where it was written (someone will remember) appears in a flash-amarcord: Try again, you’ll be luckier !.
Retrieve certification: but which certification should I recover, if I haven’t lost it?
What makes the bureaucratese unbearable the improper use of the Italian language, which forces you to make an effort of interpretation that makes you feel stupid as a result. A bit like communicating with someone who gropes your language and deducing the meaning of a sentence from the context, after several failed attempts at understanding.
But I say: how difficult, when writing for millions of users, to make proper use of verbs? Recovering (even a recent minister who I do not name comes to us) means regaining possession of something that was feared lost or destroyed. And if I have never been in possession of the vaccination certificate, how can I recover it? Unless the certificate in question had already been issued without my knowledge and therefore it was necessary to go – rightly so – to retrieve it. Bh.
Having no other choice, I still click on the so-called recovery button, and the following screen appears: Certification not available. If you already meet the requirements to obtain it, the Certification in the generation phase.
Pause. Apart from the fact that the certification is not a provincial capital (so you can’t see why they write it with a capital letter), if I read that a document is not available, what do I understand? That my request cannot be processed, right? In short, the language has a meaning, holy god. And not that it can be used to the fullest extent, as if one were making a bottle of Tavernello before writing a text that will be taken at face value by millions of people. Because I might also be fine with denial (despite having performed the procedure twice without skipping any steps), if the answer ended there. But no, he continues and denies, because if after the point you tell me that if I already possess the requisites to obtain it (of course I have them, otherwise I would not have filled out the form), the certification is being generated, I understand that the certification available and how, so much so that they are generating it.
But since you can’t move this logical objection to a screen, what do you do? You remain there, stunned and frustrated by an unschooled and caustic text with respect to the contradiction of which you can do nothing. So you give up, you abandon the company and you delude yourself that who knows, maybe one day they will send you home, that certification that you should have recovered without having lost it.
June 26, 2021 | 09:17
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