Latino outreach or Google Translate? 2020 Dems bungle Spanish websites

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/2020-democrats-spanish-translation/

Using Google to translate Spanish text into English is a trick used by high school students to avoid doing their Spanish homework — not something you’d expect to see from candidates for the highest office in the land.

Yet several Democratic White House hopefuls appear to be doing precisely that. They’re posting passages in Spanish on their websites that bear striking similarities to the output from Google’s translation service, appearing to perform only minor cleanup before publishing the copy on their sites. While Google Translate can serve as a workable starting point, more often than not it needs a human hand to produce Spanish that would pass muster with a native speaker.

Every campaign site that POLITICO reviewed had mistakes, ranging from minor typos to truly incomprehensible passages. The website of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, posted shortly after her Feb. 20 announcement, addresses her mother using a masculine adjective. Sen. Kamala Harris at one point wrote that she had “wasted” her life defending American democracy. And Julián Castro’s website extolls the possibility of building an “América” that works for everyone, seemingly not realizing that he’s making promises about the entire American continent.

The Spanish-language sites represent an effort by the Democratic candidates to court the burgeoning Latino electorate, estimated at 27 million by Voto Latino, a group that works to register Latino voters. But good intentions aside, the errors risk producing the opposite effect, prompting Spanish speakers to question how seriously the candidates are taking them if they can’t even get basic English-to-Spanish translation right.

[MineralMan]

1. Using Google Translate is overwhelmingly stupid,

without having a native speaker of whatever language you are translating to proofreading the translation. There's no shortage of Spanish native speakers in this country.

I use Google Translate all the time, but very, very carefully, and only after back-translating until I get identical results from the back-translation to my original English. And I almost never use it unless I'm personally familiar with the target language.

To use Google Translate for campaign materials is beyond stupid. Incorrect translations say just one thing: "I don't really care, and am not going to spend a penny making sure my Spanish is correct."

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. The ranking:

Booker A-

Gabbard A-

Harris A-

Inslee A-

Castro B+

Gillibrand B+

Warren C+

Klobuchar C

O’Rourke Incomplete

Sanders Incomplete

Buttigieg F

Delaney F

Yang F

[IluvPitties]

3. Hire Spanish speakers with formal training in the language!

How hard can that be?

[dsc]

4. It reeks of non professionalism

It shouldn't be hard to find Spanish speakers especially for those who have campaigned in places with large Latinix communities. It is almost better to have none at all than a poor one.

[rogue emissary]

5. K&R