Bad Characters

It is bad enough that Chinese-speaking citizens cannot always get ballots in their language. It is worse that they must contend with poorly translated election materials. But it is incomprehensible that translated ballots would list Democrats as Republicans and Republicans as Democrats!

Yet that is exactly what happened in the November 2000 election in New York. At six voting sites in Flushing, Queens, party labels for all state races were reversed on the Chinese-language ballots. And that is simply the most egregious error. Others include voting instructions so carelessly translated they could not be understood, characters printed so small they could not be read, and directions that said one thing in English and another in Chinese.

How could such glaring mistakes occur? They occurred because the New York City Board of Elections does not use qualified, competent translators. It sends election materials to translation companies and does not properly proofread the materials when they are returned. The elections office does not have a Chinese language proofreader on staff, but simply asks employees “who are Asian” to look over the materials. These employees do not necessarily speak Chinese well, and they are certainly not professional proofreaders.

The result is confusion and frustration among Chinese voters. Worse, it is disenfranchisement of some. And worse still, the careless attitude toward accurate translation tells Chinese Americans that their voice does not matter.

Links:

• Chinatown Ballot Shows ‘Republican’ as ‘Democrat’
  Voters Face Bad Translations, Conflicting Instructions
• Elections - Lost in Translation?