Re: Chinese (and other) pilots unable to speak English pose danger ...
- From: Auzerais@xxxxxxxxx (auzerais v)
- Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:37:13 -0700
Candidates lost in Chinese translation
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY
July 11, 2007
Boston's 2008 presidential primary ballot could read like a bad Chinese
menu.
There might be "Sticky Rice" in column A, "Virtue Soup" in column B and,
in column C, "Upset Stomach."
Those could be choices facing some voters if the names of Mitt Romney,
Fred Thompson and Hillary Rodham Clinton were converted into Chinese
characters, according to Massachusetts' top election official. And that
gives Secretary of State William Galvin heartburn.
On Tuesday, Galvin filed a challenge in federal court to a Justice
Department agreement requiring that ballots be fully translated to
protect the rights of Chinese-speaking voters.
Galvin says Chinese ? which uses characters, not letters; has sounds
with several meanings; and is spoken in several dialects ? will create
ballot chaos.
"Elections have to be precise," says Galvin, who wants ballot
instructions in Chinese but candidate names in English. He says
transliteration ? using characters whose sounds approximate the way
the names are spoken ? can have "unintended negative inferences."
The federal government and some Asian-American activists disagree.
Transliterating candidate names "is an effective way to allow voters to
vote independently," unaccompanied by someone to translate, says Justice
Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson.
Ann Har-Yee Wong of Boston's Elections Advisory Committee says asking
Chinese-speaking voters to read a candidate's name in English is "akin
to a Boston cabdriver navigating the streets in Beijing while trying to
read street signs only in Chinese characters."
Margaret Fung of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
says: "If you take seriously that voters be able to exercise their vote
and cast an informed ballot, then the election officials should"
transliterate names.
The controversy stems from a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department
that accused Boston poll workers of mismarking the ballots of Asian
voters who didn't speak English. A 2005 settlement requires the city to
translate instructions, office titles and candidate names on ballots in
precincts with large numbers of Chinese speakers.
Fung says Asian-Americans are eligible under the federal Voting Rights
Act to receive help at polling places in 16 jurisdictions in seven
states with large numbers of non-English-speaking voters. Among those,
seven counties in California and New York transliterate candidates'
names on ballots.
Asian-Americans are among the fastest-growing minority groups in Boston.
Officials there first transliterated candidate names last year in
special city council elections. But Galvin, who oversees state and
federal elections, is balking at doing the same, including for the March
4 presidential primary.
He says it would cost Massachusetts "thousands of dollars but, worse
than that, litigation and time" if candidates sued over how their names
are translated.
Alice Leung, a community organizer with Boston's Chinese Progressive
Association, says that would be unlikely if candidates could review how
their names are translated. "For those not familiar with the Chinese
language, it may sound possible that the transliterated names carry some
meaning. However, Chinese readers would see this as silly as assuming
Mr. Green or Brown to be colors," she says.
Still, things can be lost in translation. Hope Chu of the Organization
of Chinese Americans says hers is a tonal language in which a sound has
many meanings. Take the "ma" in Barack Obama. It can mean "horse,"
"mother," "how," "what" or "to scold." And while Obama comes out as "Oh
Bus Horse" in Cantonese, in the Mandarin dialect the Democrat's full
name, according to a translation provided by Galvin, means "Oh
Intellectual Overcome Profound Oh Gemstone." Or, says Siri Karm Singh
Khalsa, president of The Boston Language Institute, "Europe Pulling a
Horse."
If Obama's alias appears inscrutable, Clinton's sends an unpleasant
message: "Upset Stomach." Phil Singer, spokesman for Clinton's campaign,
says Chinese-American campaign workers told him that the characters
usually used in Chinese-American media for her name mean "Like
Prosperity."
Not all translations are distasteful. Neither Thompson weighing a bid
for the Republican presidential nomination is likely to get hot or sour
over his Chinese name. In Mandarin, Fred Thompson's name could mean
"Fortune Virtue Soup." In Cantonese, Tommy Thompson is "Beautiful Soup."
As for "Sticky Rice," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden says, "it could have
been worse. My obvious preference would have been that it translated as
'Tax Cutter.' "
.
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