Should “native language” claims be verified?

Robin wrote:

…let me stress that my repeated references to English are just by way of example. My views would be exactly the same had I chosen to refer to Spanish or French, both of which are very familiar to me as both source and target languages.
1. The straightforward answer to OP’s question a hundred and thirty or so pages ago is: “Yes”. Indeed, absolutely and unequivocally: “YES!” That, surely, goes without saying. For crying out loud, who, on a public website offering services to a professional community, could possibly suggest that lying and cheating are ‘OK’? Statements designed to trick consumers, or pretending that falsehood is just a ‘marketing strategy’, are in my book straightforward dishonest dealing. If I were a dissatisfied client of any such ‘fibber’ and the circumstances were such as to allow access to the English courts, I would have not the slightest hesitation in instigating proceedings under the Consumer Protection Act (1987). In the same vein I suggest that a ‘colleague’ […] (who shall be nameless, of course) watches his backside, least he fall foul of Law 19.955 (1997) of the Republic of [x]. In any event, let him be assured that he’ll get no work from me or my company, even if he drops his claim to be a native English speaker. His reputation is irremediably tarnished... Likewise the other posters who have proudly declared themselves ‘liars’ in this thread; and those who, without going nearly as far in proclaiming their sins, have nonetheless drawn attention to the hiatus ‘twixt their claims and their real writing skills in their self-assumed ‘native’ language. There's no need to name names – you know who you are. Indeed, we all know!
2. (Warning to non-natives: this item contains complex sentence structures which I can’t be bothered to simply for your benefit; if you can’t cope, please feel free to skip to item 3.) I venture to suggest that no-one whose cultural, linguistic, social, family, ethnic and educational upbringing has been conducted entirely or principally in accordance with the customs, traditions and/or obligations of a country, nation or community which, itself, does not have English as its (or ‘a’, in deference to truly multilingual countries such as Switzerland, Belgium, Wales, etc.) native language (note: ‘native’, not ‘official’), can justify any claim to have English as his/her native language, regardless of that person’s level of proficiency in English. For example: no one born, bred, educated and brought up in the African continent (except, at a pinch, Liberia - any takers?), or in the Indian sub-continent, unless of native-English-language parentage (term defined and applied recursively) and brought up in the family wardrobe (US: closet) or in other circumstances in which the family has gone to extreme lengths to provide a specific native-language development framework for their offspring specifically for the purpose of generating and conserving English nativeness (as was the case of Lisa, it seems), can possibly have English as his/her native language, simply because English is not the/a native language of that country. Case closed, as far as I’m concerned.
3. I reject, in the strongest possible terms tolerated by site moderators, the absolutely preposterous idea put forward by several posters in this thread to the effect that one can “lose one’s native language”.... many pages back (in a post referring to some obscure linguistic research done by academics in the US), suggested precisely that.... Others (mostly obvious non-natives if I recall correctly) later supported the idea that anyone who leaves their ‘native’ environment automatically loses their native language after an indeterminate number of years. Knowing that Samuel has recently moved from his native South Africa to The Netherlands, I wonder how he will feel if Proz – or a band of self-proclaimed ‘false’ native speakers of Afrikaans – decides one day to deprive him of his birthright as a native speaker of his native language, effectively barring him arbitrarily from access to jobs into that language. Considering my own curriculum, […], are you (anyone who supports this idea, not just Samuel) really suggesting that when I quit the UK, age 25, to take up employment as an in-house translator in continental Europe 35+ years ago, I automatically disqualified myself for the position I had won on the very basis of my being (then, as now) a native English speaker? It’s utterly ludicrous! And today, seeing as I’ve never returned to the UK in the intervening 35+ years, and I no longer speak English on a day-to-day basis, where does that leave me?
Just in case some trigger-happy non-native hasn’t spotted the rhetoric (see item 5 below), I’ll tell you where that leaves me: my native language is STILL, whether you like it or not, English.
Ah! – before anyone starts labelling me as a ‘special case’, just think for a moment about the huge number of translators working for the EU, the UN and hundreds of other international organizations and their agencies who are in just that same position.
Long story short: To those who may be tempted to suggest I might no longer be a native English speaker, I tender this warning: Do not, repeat: NOT, meddle with my personal heritage!
4. Following on from that argument along the lines of ‘a person can lose their native language’, it has been implied that any verification process ought also to detect any such loss of nativeness, since otherwise the system would be discriminatory. The title of my post suggests, and I reaffirm here, that a native can easily recognise another native of his/her own native language. But how do the non-natives propose that they, or Proz (or anyone else, for that matter) might go about establishing that a native has ‘lost’ his/her native language? I venture to suggest that it cannot be done. First, because it is impossible to lose one’s native language (at least, if you do lose it, then truthful self-reporting on Proz will be the very least of your psychiatric worries); second, because, whilst there are criteria (albeit diverse criteria) serving to determine nativeness, there are none for determining loss of nativeness (which, before anyone raises a finger to object, is not the same as ‘non-nativeness’). True native-speakers will always have the upper hand in this matter, even if, as someone already suggested, a good non-native speaker can also spot a bad one. Indeed, much has been made of the errors in the writing of some posters here who claim (or not, as the case may be) to be native English speakers. As a native English speaker myself, I have a very clear idea as to ‘who’s what’ in this thread. In the vernacular of my birthplace: when it comes to being a native English speaker: you is – or you isn’t. For the record, I have positively identified four individuals at risk of being reported to Proz staff for violation of the site rule about misrepresentation if, despite all odds, I decide to stick around.
5. Whilst writing skills are of evident importance to translation, ‘native language’ per se is more concerned with the spoken word. It’s not surprising, then, that this thread has focused on those two skills. But let’s not forget that there are three ‘Rs’: readin’, ‘ritin’, and (oops! ‘rithmetic – way OT here!). No matter! - let’s not forget reading. For those using a foreign language it is often said that of reading, writing and speaking the easiest is reading. That’s widely held to be due to the fact that one can read non-linearly to test one’s interpretation of the text and glean meaning through a process of successive approximation (for ‘meaning’ read ‘gut-felt understanding’ if you’re a true native speaker; ‘informed understanding’ if you’re a skilled non-native, ‘pure guesswork’ if you’re a non-speaker pretending to be a native). Meanwhile, non-linear writing is generally frowned upon (unless your surname happens to be García Márquez or Joyce) and non-linear speaking is, well, intrinsically anti-communicative among common mortals although it speaks volumes to men in white coats. With that in mind I find it, err… let’s say ‘curious’, that on so many occasions in this long thread, people claiming to be native English speakers, or to have ‘native-equivalent’ or ‘near-native’ proficiency in English, have so obviously been unable to read and correctly interpret straightforward ideas expressed in plain everyday English by accredited native English speakers who, in deference to their non-native English readers, have often gone out of their way to communicate clearly, efficiently and effectively – albeit, on occasions, colloquially.
Time and again, our non-native friends have failed to spot the English native’s use of irony or innuendo; humorous quips have been taken as straight-laced fact; straight-laced fact has been sensed as insult and bullying; easy-going forum-friendly discourse has been contested with a florid formality of the kind not seen in everyday native English since the time of the Raj; rhetoric has been met with unnecessary responses; and can it really be that I am the only reader here to have spotted that classic of English idiom, hyperbole, in play?
Flagrant lack of empathy with the language as a reader is, in my book, a far surer sign of non-nativeness than any exercise in essay writing, chat session, phone call, multi-choice Q&A or what-have-you. If, as seems to be the case, a sub-purpose of this thread is to find a way to distinguish between true and false natives (of any language), I suggest that the first test – even before organizing an oral or written exchange with an accredited native speaker – could simply involve having the candidate read a short but well-constructed text in that language and invite him/her to correctly identify its register, meaning and significance in context. When I were a lad it was called ‘comprehension testing’; there’s probably some more highfaluting expression in use now but whatever it’s called, it’s a valuable and simple tool for separating wheat from chaff. By my reckoning, on the strength of what’s been written here, at least half the contributors to this thread have already failed that test!
6. I am frankly appalled to see how the ‘native-language-doesn’t matter’ brigade have contrived not merely to undermine the OP’s original purpose but actually to promote the idea that lying and cheating is ‘OK’ even to the point of persuading some ‘it’s not OK’ partisans to change or at least weaken their stance. In so doing, they have turned this entire thread into a damp squib that will do nothing whatsoever to encourage Proz management to tidy up their act. If 130 or so pages of keen debate (and not a little antagonism) can come up at the end of the day with nothing better than “Proz should simply make it clear to outsourcers that nothing is verified”, then heaven help Proz users and their clients!
7. Someone, many pages back, wrote that he was ‘flabbergasted’ to see that anyone who isn’t a site member/user could possibly be monitoring this tread. “Have they nothing better to do?” he asked. Someone else – a gentleman from the Indian sub-continent if my memory serves me – suggested that from the standpoint of Proz’s business objectives the nativity (sic) issue is irrelevant because the only folk who might quit the site are non-paying members anyway. Apart from the fact that those non-payers generate income (in the form of advertising revenue), and apart from the fact that some of those non-payers are potential payers at some future point in time, there is also an amorphous and unquantified body of professionals like myself who are observing Proz policies and practice from the outside, with a view to maybe (re)joining the ranks or, perhaps, using the site to find translators meeting this or that set of criteria. I don’t represent anyone other than myself and my new business. I suggest, however, that we outsiders will be increasingly more inclined to avoid Proz if the matter raised in this thread is not dealt with satisfactorily; that is, by setting up a properly functioning system to verify native languages to such an extent as is necessary to make the jobs board ‘fit for purpose’. I note also that at least two contributors to this thread have suggested that they may abandon ship if the issue raised in this thread is not resolved satisfactorily.