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Dems Debate In Spanish

By Eric Kleefeld - September 10, 2007, 9:24AM

Last night's Democratic debate in Miami, hosted by Univision, featured the candidates courting the Latino vote in a format never attempted before. With the candidates' English answers simultaneously translated to Spanish and dubbed over for the Hispanic viewing audience, the candidates addressed topics ranging from immigration to labor issues to Cuba policy before an audience more used to that language.

One interesting moment came when Bill Richardson attempted to answer a question in Spanish — the primary language of his childhood — but was cut off under the previously agreed debate rules that all the candidates answer in English. "I'm disappointed today that 43 million Latinos in this country, for them not to hear one of their own speak Spanish is unfortunate," Mr. Richardson said to applause.

A Republican debate has been indefinitely postponed, effectively cancelled, due to none of the candidates except John McCain agreeing to participate.

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Ruben Navarrette brings up a pretty good argument in his CNN.com commentary today at Commentary: 'English-only' debate rule lost in translation.

As the sponsor of last night's Democratic presidential forum, Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language network, made a big deal of the fact that the 90-minute broadcast was in Spanish with the help of translators. And one of the first questions was whether the candidates were willing to promote Spanish as a second national language of the United States.
Aiy, muy caliente! That's a hot one. No wonder most of the candidates ducked it.

The contradiction was that, in setting the ground rules for the debate, Univision had prohibited the two candidates who speak fluent Spanish -- Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd -- from answering questions in that language and insisted that all candidates answer the questions in English and have their answers translated into Spanish. Apparently, this was meant to level the bilingual playing field.

During the debate, Richardson called the network on its hypocrisy. Identifying himself as the first major Latino presidential candidate, he said it was unfortunate that Latinos in the United States couldn't "hear one of their own speak Spanish." Then Richardson accused Univision of promoting -- gasp! --"English-only."

Bravo. He's right. It was a dumb rule, obviously intended to prevent the monolingual front-runners -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards -- from being at a disadvantage.

As for the question itself, that was also dumb -- oops, I mean, tonto. (In honor of my friends at Univision.) Many on the Latino Left would agree with me that it's wrong, arrogant, and unnecessarily divisive for some to push English as the national language. Yet now, suddenly someone is talking about putting the zapato on the other foot and elevating Spanish to a second national language.

Posted by Eric Stepp
September 10, 2007 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink

The rule seems kind of bizarre, but I think I understand the reasoning. If you allow the Spanish-speakers to answer in Spanish when not all of the candidates are Spanish-speaking, language essentially becomes a trump card. That is, the ability to speak Spanish is a huge boost, and has the potential to undermine any substantive appreciation of the candidates' positions. (Not to knock the audience's cognitive abilities, I'm just saying it's human nature; I've observed the same problem with foreign leaders who speak fluent English vs. those who are translated.)

And given that, I suspect the organizers probably correctly saw it as a necessary condition to getting the other candidates to participate.

(That said, I also understand Richardson's attempt to make an end run around the rule -- while he doubtless knew it would be quashed, it would still be to his benefit.)

Posted by Redshift
September 10, 2007 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink