Universally Speaking
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I’m a San Franciscan. It’s where my family landed when we hit North America, and it’s where I hope they bury my bones*. One thing everyone should understand about we San Franciscans: we don’t give a shit who you are. It takes a while for transplants to get this, but we’re pretty much anti-celebrity. That’s more of an “LA Thing”, and if there’s one thing San Franciscans hate more than celebrities, it’s LA**. So when a shop steward from a local SEIU union walks into my office, I’m going to call him “sir” and ask if he needs coffee.
The thing is, his English wasn’t great. I mean, yada yada, better than my Spanish. And yes, we could have had a nice conversation about the weather, or the Giants (assuming he’s into baseball to the same minimal extent I am). But the high-level, semi-technical political conversation that he wanted to have… I didn’t have the Spanish, and he didn’t have the English for.
I’m going to go ahead and make a supposition. The man is an SEIU shop steward. That means he’s most likely a US citizen. That means that roughly twice a year he’s going to get a ballot and be asked to make some decisions about the state constitution.*** As a citizen myself, one who is bound to live under whatever laws and constitution we mutually create, I want my fellow citizens to have as much knowledge and information as possible when helping guide our state. Therefore, I think it obvious that English-only laws are actively harmful to the ongoing project that we call American Democracy.
I don’t wish to lecture too much, but democracy is about the sense that all citizens are equal before the eyes of the law. If that means inconveniencing everyone by adding extra pages of government paperwork written in languages many people don’t read, that’s just the way it goes. Paper and ink are a very small price to pay to ensure that my fellow citizens know what they’re voting on, and what traffic laws are. Not to mention tax forms that can be filled out no matter how English-proficient the tax-payer is.
*Technically, we San Franciscans are not buried in town, but rather shipped off to rot in Colma. And, really, I’m hoping to be cremated.
** That, and calling our town “Frisco”. Seriously, don’t do that.
*** That’s how often we do this in California. Yes, it’s crazy.
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That’s actually a really good point. I wonder why they _don’t_ translate the laws into various languages… especially languages that represent significant portions of the population of the United States.
Although… points of law are often argued based on punctuation and specific phrasing. I can’t imagine how complicated the legal system might become if they were arguing over multiple translations of the law.
For me, it’s less the laws (multilingual laws get into all sorts of issues), and more the ballot information _about_ the laws. “what this bill does” information is a lot easier to write (and translate!) than the technical language that goes into crafting laws.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that laws aren’t really written in English, just a programing code that looks a lot _like_ English.
That makes sense, but doesn’t explain why no one is doing it. Obviously the groups who are out to make various reading materials more available to the minorities don’t give much thought to making sure they’re able to understand the laws… it seems to me there’s something wrong with that picture.
I’d take this a step further:
The laws themselves are written in Legalese, which is a peculiar dialect of English which most intelligent English speakers can figure out, with some work, and the appropriate reference material, but is really only easily intelligible to trained lawyers. All official discussion of the law use these documents written in Legalese, which is appropriate for that purpose, as it’s very precise and unambiguous (when used properly).
Then, there should be non-Legalese translations made available in all the most common languages spoken in the U.S., including English, so your average citizen, of any national origin, can not just read it, but actually understand it. These versions of the laws will carry no legal weight. Any official discussions on interpretations of the law still use the original English Legalese version of the laws. It would simply be a resource for the rest of us.
@Michael: I understand that most of the time congress writes laws in plain English, then sends ‘em to the lawyers for translation. I’m not sure why the plain English version isn’t also translated into Spanish and Tagalog…
There’s immense value to having a national common language. Linguistic divisions create obstacles to full political participation like the ones you’re talking about (which can be mitigated but not eliminated by offering translations to most of the commonly-used languages other than English), as well as seperating English-speaking communities from Spanish-speaking or French-speaking or Tagalog-speaking communities by preventing social blending along the edges and by segregating the news, education, and entertainment available to the seperate communities.
Rather than simply giving up and accepting this, I’d rather we did a better job of teaching English to immigrants and their children. A bit part of the solution needs to be immigration reform to let most of the people who currently come here illegally to come here legally, since it’s easier to support and encourage English learning by legal immigrants than illegal immigrants. My father’s the son of a German immigrant and an Italian immigrant who grew up in an Italian immigrant community, and I’ve very glad that he and I speak English as a first language rather than only speaking Italian or speaking Italian and German by not English.
As for the immediate problem you’re complaining about, I’m not sure what they do in San Francisco, but here in Santa Clara County, ballots and voter information packets are offered in English, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese, and Korean. I don’t have a problem with translation of basic public information to support the needs of tourists and recent immigrants, so long as we actively work towards the goal of universal English proficiency.
@Eric,
Yes, I’m rather fond of the idea of bilingual education with the goal of helping people learn English.
For further clarity, I think we should make 2nd generational English proficiency our goal (we already do a pretty good job at that), while recognizing that Immigrant-generation Americans will probably not learn English to the the high degree of proficiency needed to make informed decisions about our government.
In California, we seem to have embraced this as good public policy. Federally, we get things like this: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/273786/english_only_amendment_added_to_immigration.html