Reader’s Opinion | My car doesn’t speak Finnish, and the seller came up with an excellent explanation

I bought a well-known German car with a pre-installed navigator. During the commissioning phase of the car, I noticed that the navigator’s maps and subtitles were in Finnish, but the voice inside it did not agree to speak Finnish, English and all other languages ​​- starting with Estonia. Contacting the car manufacturer in writing revealed that the Finnish car importer has not demanded voice control in Finnish, so “nichts zu tun”.

The representative of the car’s importer didn’t get any answer about the lack of Finnish, but the salesperson at the car shop explained that there are so many dialects in Finland that the manufacturer doesn’t know which one to choose as the voice for the voice control. The explanation is quite creative even for a professional in the field, but it doesn’t go very far, because Swedish and Finno-Swedish, like all other languages, also have many dialects.

Since written Swedish is suitable for the navigator’s voice control in Sweden, according to what logic would Finnish written language not be suitable for the same use in Finland?

It was said that the retrofitting of a Finnish-speaking voice is possible and the price estimate is around 2,000 euros. Ready-installed, it would hardly increase the price of the car by the same amount. The car importer saves here in the wrong place or doesn’t care about the customer’s safety, because there are many Finns who either don’t know English or know it poorly.

Finnish-language user manuals and instructions are required for goods imported to Finland, because English is not an official language in Finland and almost a million senior citizens have not received English instruction at school. The requirement has been fulfilled quite well, with the exception of a few car importers, because the cars are sold even without them. Navigating with maps in an unfamiliar environment weakens concentration on driving and increases the risk of a crash even more.

Juha Karvonen

Tampere

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