There is a change. For the first time we are going to have three presidential Republican candidates debating in a televised Spanish-language debate. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, former New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, have decided to participate in this forum. McCain and Hunter accepted the previous invitation to do the Spanish-language debate, but because they were only initially only two it was canceled, but now it is on with other candidates springing to the fore. The first ever televised Spanish debate to be broad-casted in Spanish was done by 7 Democratic candidates, including Hilary Clinton and Obama, participated in this. The candidates will be asked the questions in Spanish, which will be translated into English, by their headphones, but their answers will be translated back into Spanish.
The Republicans did not refuse the invitation because they were afraid thye could have lost swing states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, which have fast growing Hispanic populations. Mitt Romney, seeing this is, wrote a letter to the Univision executives praising the contributions Hispanics have made to America. Romney stated, "I look forward to addressing Univision's audience and discussing my ideas to strengthen America through stronger families, a stronger economy and a stronger military.... these are the values that have attracted millions of Hispanics to the Republican Party, and I believe they will continue to do so in the future." Giuliani's and Thompson's campaigns also embraced Univision's invitation - "We think it will be a valuable opportunity to communicate with Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere, and expand the mayor's strong ties in the Hispanic community," Giuliani spokesman Elliott Bundy said. Thompson's campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky said: "Sen. Thompson has been running a campaign that is appealing to all segments of the U.S., all Americans, and we feel he's got a message that is resonating in all communities. He's excited to participate in this forum.
The interesting thing about this forum is the fact that the candidates are showing that the Hispanic vote is very critical and are doing everything in their might to attain it. And there is no better way to reach out to a new-comer than by doing something that reminds him of home. It is like a new kid on the block from India. To make him feel at home, one has to offer to play cricket with him, a sport which is the country's past-time, such an invitation would warm his heart, and thus allow him to make the transition. And it is interesting to note the amount of Spanish speaking people coming into America, that the presidential debate has now started to be said in Spanish. Will there be a time when there are now translating ear phones to the candidates, who will simply be responding back in fluently in Spanish? Well, only time will tell.
4 comments:
Interesting post... Do you find it important for candidates to learn Spanish? If they learn Spanish, should they be learning other languages? At what point do we decide it is important for a new language to be learned and adopted? What do we do about different connotations of words because of different languages?
In the case of politics, if one is trying to reach out to a particular minority for votes, then it is good to know how to speak their language, as is the case with this debate. But, I feel once a reasonable amount of people begin to speak the language then people should start learning it, just for communicative purposes. But, like in South Africa, they are 11 official languages...but the most used are English and Afrikaans, as all the other languages are not taught in school.
Great post and discussion!
This is interesting. It makes me think of how accurately something can actually be translated. How well will the candidates' points come across when translated? It will be interesting to see :)
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