electionline Weekly

In Focus This Week

New Spanish-Language Glossary Aims to Help Election Officials
First revision of glossary of voting terms since 1979

By M. Mindy Moretti
electionline.org

When is a member contribution not a member contribution? When in Cuban-Spanish it’s an aportes de los miembros (masculine) and in Puerto Rican-Spanish it’s a contribuciones de los miembros (feminine) and for other Spanish-speakers, it’s an aportaciones de los miembros (feminine).

The last time a Spanish-language glossary of voting terms was produced — by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 1979 — there were approximately 11 million people in the United States who spoke Spanish as their primary language. The Language Minority Provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring some jurisdictions to provide foreign-language voting information was four years old and only 16 jurisdictions in six states and two states in their entirety were required to provide voting information in Spanish.

Twenty-eight years later, there are approximately 31 million people in the U.S. who speak mainly Spanish at home, 65 jurisdictions in 15 different states as well as four states in their entirety are required to provide voting information in Spanish, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has released a new and updated Spanish-language glossary of voting terms.

“We had an obligation to update this helpful tool for Spanish-speaking voters and the election officials who serve them, and I am very pleased to announce that we have gotten it done,” EAC Chair Donetta Davidson said in a statement.

The EAC convened its first Language Working Group as part of the Language Accessibility Program in 2005. From that group — made up of local election officials, Congressional staff members, national advocacy groups as well as research and public policy organizations — came a variety of recommendations including the need to re-do the voting terms glossary.

From abandoned ballot (papeleta abandonada) to zoning regulations (normas de zonificacion) the glossary covers 1,843 terms and phrases used in the election process. That’s more than double the number of terms that were in the FEC’s 1979 glossary.

When compiling the list of terms, the contractor for the EAC consulted with members of the working group and with all the state election Web sites to see what terminology was frequently being used in the election world.

“So many words and terms simply didn’t exist in 1979. There is a lot more technical language in the election field now,” explained Edgardo Cortes, EAC election research specialist. “We went through six or seven revisions of the list to eliminate duplicate terms and terms that were too local.”

Some localities, such as Los Angeles County, had their own Spanish-language glossary of elections terms. The EAC relied heavily on them for assistance with the new glossary.

“I think they [Los Angeles County] showed a lot of initiative in producing their own glossary,” said EAC Vice-Chair Rosemary Rodriguez. “And they shared it freely not only with us, but with other jurisdictions as well. 

Even though much has changed in the world of elections and some voting equipment or terminology may no longer be used on a daily basis, Cortes said no words, such as chad (perforacion), were eliminated because they still have historical context.

To ensure that translations were culturally and linguistically appropriate, terms were translated and reviewed by a multi-dialect team of translators representing four of the main regions of origin of the Hispanic population living in the United States — Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and Central America.

And this is sometimes where they ran into problems and had to print multiple translations for one word or phrase, as was the case with member contribution. Although the translating of the glossary was done by an outside contractor, it was up to Cortes and another member of the EAC staff to make sure that those translations were accurate and culturally relevant.

“We had to make sure that we weren’t doing literal translations,” Cortes said. “One of the biggest complaints we heard during the working group was that they appreciated the effort being put forth by election administrators, but a lot of times the translation was done very literally and it didn’t provide the same meaning.”

But sometimes a word or phrase had to be literally translated. Such was the case with sip/puff tube for voters who are not able to use the touch screen or touch pad, which, translated is: tubo de succión/exhalación para electores queno pueden utilizar la pantalla táctil o la almohadilla táctil. 

According to Cortes, so far the feedback on the new glossary of terms has been positive.

“We’ve actually gotten several emails from election officials and they are very excited about it,” Cortes said. “We’re getting lots of requests for printed copies, which should be available sometime late next week.”

Next on the EAC agenda for translation are Pacific Rim languages including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean and Tagalog.

According to Rodriguez, the language working group is already in place for the next round of translations and the commission has reserved money in the FY07 budget to translate and produce a glossary in these other languages and hopes to have them in time for the 2008 election cycle.

After these translations are complete, Rodriguez said the Commission hopes to move on to translations for American Indian languages.

“It’s going to be a big challenge, but it is on our work plan to try to attempt to produce a glossary,” she said. “There are so many different dialects and Navajo, which is surely one we would attempt to do, is probably one the most complex languages in the world. We’re really going to have to put our shoulders to the wheel when we tackle that.”