Abortion-choice measures are a challenge for interpreters

Measures in the area of ​​reproductive rights will then be on the ballot in 10 states heated debates about how to describe their effects on abortion – and that’s only in English.

The federal language is responsible in 388 places in the United States where English is not the primary language of the electorate Voting Rights Act Requires all election information to be made available in each municipality's native language.

Such translations are intended to help non-native English speakers understand what they are voting for. But vague or technical terms can be challenging, especially when it comes to indigenous languages ​​for which there are few written dictionaries.

In the New York referendum, for example, this is not even the case Use the word “Abortion,” complicating efforts to convey the intent — advocates complain that the official Korean translation means “drop the fetus.” And how exactly should the science of “viability” in the Florida and Nevada Measures can be explained by the oral traditions of the Seminole and Shoshone tribes?

The Navajo and Hopi tribes have more material translated than most, and they have more than enough voters to influence the results. As part of a federal court settlement with the Arizona Secretary of State, county election officials are gathering community representatives to reach consensus on written translations. Navajo, Hopi and Spanish interpreters then do outreach and create spoken recordings for the touchpads, which are also used by blind voters.

In most other places, other official English-language materials, including explanations of the measures' effects, do not receive the same attention, said Allison Neswood, a lawyer at the Native American Rights Foundation, which monitors compliance.

“Native speakers should have access to all the information that English speakers have, including the language in which ballot initiatives are explained,” Neswood said.

Other tribes have opted against written translations and instead station tribal translators at polling stations. The law allows this, despite questions about vote secrecy and possible bias, which even interpreters say can be problematic.

For example, Colorado's Amendment 79 seems relatively simple: a “yes” vote would enshrine “a right to abortion” in the state constitution.

But there is not a single word for abortion in the native language of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Montezuma County, Colorado, whose written dictionary contains fewer than 10,000 words, so Ute language teacher Helen Munoz will personally translate on Election Day.

A phrase describing abortion in Ute means “your baby, you're killing it,” Munoz explained. Another suggests terminating a pregnancy before the embryo develops, as in “Your baby before it grows, it's ready.”

“I would explain to them that abortion is just that – it kills the child before it grows to full maturity,” she said. “I would ask them, ‘What do you think? You are the one who goes to the ballot box to vote for who you want. What do you think?'”

Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires translations in a county or city where the U.S. Census Bureau has determined that more than 10,000 people are voting-age citizens with “limited English proficiency” who speak the same language, or that those citizens are at least five are % of the population and their illiteracy rate exceeds the national illiteracy rate.

Most of these places need to be translated into Spanish. Among the states adopting reproductive rights this election, several Arizona counties must provide translations into the languages ​​of the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Paiute and Pueblo tribes. Other state-required languages ​​include Shoshone and Filipino in Nevada counties; Seminole in Florida; Ute in Colorado; and Chinese, Korean and Bengali in New York.

Spanish shouldn't be that difficult since, like English, it is a Latin-derived language, but even those can fail if election officials rely on computer translations. Attorney Cesar Ruiz says his group LatinoJustice PRLDEF is pushing for human translators instead. “It’s constant work,” he said.

In Florida, Glades County elections director Aletris Farnam said Seminole leaders told her not to bother with written translations — a decision she wants to document so she's covered if questions about compliance arise .

“I met with the tribe and they told me that their language isn't being converted like that – they don't have enough words in their language to write the language of choice,” Farnam said. “So I hire a Creek translator to work at the polling station where all the Creeks vote.”

Munoz knows that when people vote, it's important to keep their opinions to themselves. She is a 76-year-old Mountain Ute elder who said she has been doing this election work for 17 years. Still, cultural sensitivities play a role, and she said Utes tend to be anti-abortion.

“Our tribe here really doesn’t believe in anything like that,” she explained. “The little children – even if something bad happens, they are raped – it's up to the mother whether she wants to keep it or give it up, but we are conservative on abortion.”

New York’s Prop 1 would protect against unequal treatment based on “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcome, and reproductive health care and autonomy.” Proponents say this also covers abortion. A judge rejected their request so that the official English description explicitly says so. Official translations use the word anyway.

Since the characters in the official Korean version roughly translate to “drop the fetus,” Lucky Ho, civic engagement coordinator at the Asian American Federation, says her group's own materials instead use symbols that represent “the pregnancy “cancel” means.

“It's a more respectful way to talk about the body of the woman going through this experience,” Ho explained.

New York City goes beyond the federal mandate and also requires translations in Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Italian, Polish, Russian, Urdu and Yiddish. According to Asher Ross, a senior strategist at the New York Immigrant Coalition, which has tried Creole, literal word-for-word translations don't make sense in some of these languages.

“The term 'pregnancy outcomes' doesn't really translate, according to the feedback we've received,” Ross said. “I don’t know what the final translation was, but they did their best.”

While some election departments struggle to meet language requirements, Coconino County, Arizona, covers a much larger area. It hires tribal interpreters and sends a mobile unit to remote Navajo and Hopi gathering places, first to register voters and explain what will be voted on, and later to receive their ballots.

“If they need language assistance, they can go there and get it,” said county clerk Patty Hansen. “You can’t send the interpreter by mail, you know.”