I was a huge fan of the reading from Stephen May because, unlike other selections we've seen, he finds a way to incorporate idealism, realism, and language all into one coherent argument. While the second reading was emotional and intentionally provocative, I felt that May instead chose to follow the rational route. He focuses on creating language education programs and using language in the civic realm in hopes that this will allow for greater tolerance of LHR. While we can certainly argue with him about whatever "sufficient number of other-language speakers" may mean, I feel that any solution is a positive one. Even if he makes an arbitrary choice that 20% of the nation must speak a language for it to be used on a driver's test, it would be the "least-bad" solution for protecting LHRs. While, unfortunately, not everyone's language can be accommodated in this solution, the fact of the matter is that most languages will be.
The biggest problem I see with implementing this strategy in the United States is that it is incredibly difficult for the federal government to handle all of this. Individual polling places in California may require Vietnamese, while one county over the voters may need information in Spanish. In the US, at least, where there is so much linguistic diversity, the problem them becomes how to best implement the solution. With so much access to the internet, though, I feel like it should be surprisingly easy to have an online database for multi-lingual government documents. When someone requests, as per my last example, a voter registration form in Vietnamese, then a civil servant should easily be able to find it, print it, and expedite the process....which leads to another problem: how does that civil servant then register the voter if they can't read the voter registration form?
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ReplyDeleteDevil's advocate to what BZ wrote: translating formal government documents has tangible drawbacks. In the example of the US, I'm not sure translating a driver's license test into Vietnamese undermines the fabric of the nation-state (it might in other contests), but from a practical perspective, there might be good reasons why the test should be delivered in English. I recall something from a reading I did on NAFTA where it was required that Mexican truck drivers operating in the US have at least some knowledge of English. A driver's license test is not particularly challenging. If you can't understand enough English to pass it, I think someone (more nativist than myself) could make the argument that there are serious public safety risks towards letting someone who is illiterate and/or unable to communicate with the vast majority of fellow drivers operate a 2,000 pound piece of machinery. Kind of an ugly argument but I think it needs to be considered.
ReplyDeleteSimilar arguments can be made for voting. I'm not saying this is correct, but if you can't read enough English to fill out a voter registration form, how are you supposed to be able to make the informed choices that democracy requires? A cynic could make the argument that there are plenty of English-speaking uninformed voters, but I'm more idealist than that (somewhat shockingly perhaps).
Indeed an interesting point. I do think you are right about having a manageable level of English in order to drive, at least so you can understand most sign postings. Or we could copy Canada and just put signs in multiple languages where applicable. Not sure how that'd work with a bunch of languages though...
ReplyDeleteAs far as voter registration goes, you can still be informed through other people and the media. There are plenty of Chinese or Spanish or French language news sources that translate and comment on topics such as elections.