2020 Democratic Websites Aimed at Latinos Botch Translations
Democratic presidential hopefuls are facing criticism for bungling the Spanish translations on their presidential campaign websites.
In efforts to woo the increasing Latino population, Democrat 2020 presidential hopefuls created Spanish language campaign websites. However, it appears the some of these candidates simply used Google Translate to transform the websites from English to Spanish, resulting in major translation errors.
A Politico review reports that every campaign site they reviewed had mistakes “ranging from minor typos to truly incomprehensible passages,” and graded the candidates into three categories: “top of their class, average performers and the truly struggling.”
Corey Booker, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, and Jay Inslee received “A-” grades for websites that were mostly error-free with minor typos.
Meanwhile, Julian Castro was given a “B+” and the comments: “Overall good, needs closer attention to detail, see input forms etc,” while Kirsten Gillibrand earned a “B+” because her website “needs to clean up headlines, translate videos.”
Those majorly struggling include Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, awarded C+ for multiple errors and exact matches to Google Translate.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar‘s website uses masculine adjectives to address her mother. Sen. Kamala Harris describes how she “wasted” her life defending American democracy. Julian Castro wants to build an “América” (instead of the correct “Estados Unidos”) that works for everyone – and struggled with inconsistencies between the informal “tú” and the formal “usted.”
The Latino population in the United States has reached an estimated 27 million, according to Politico, and these websites are intended to court this population. But mistakes like these imply carelessness and seem more likely to deter Latino voters, critics say.
“It’s the front door to the campaign. And it’s indicative,” said Lisa Navarrete, a UnidosUS advisor. “If you’re not investing in this … it will indicate to us that perhaps you’re not taking the other parts of reaching out to the community as seriously.”
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