Translation services for immigrants

[pickwick]

So I have a question my google-fu is failing me on - I keep just getting results from the Daily Mail. I have a feeling all the information I want will be on websites in other languages, which isn't that helpful to mostly monolingual me

Comments

[londonkds]

There are furious right-wing protests in the US about government information sheets and verbal interaction being provided in Spanish, so they must be doing it for that language at least.

[pickwick]

Yeah, I've read about that, I think. Probably connected with rantings about illegal immigrants and things too.

[a_pawson]

In some parts of the US, Spanish is the primary language. We found this in some parts of Florida, particularly around Miami. There were many shops and gas stations where nobody spoke English, I assume because of the large Mexican and Cuban immigrant population.

[pickwick]

Yeah, I can't really think of an analogous situation in Britain for that - Welsh or Gaelic-speaking places are a bit different because they're indigenous languages, I guess.

[londonkds]

English isn't an indigenous language in the US either.

[pickwick]

True, dammit! I was trying to find a word other than "indigenous" and couldn't...

[londonkds]

Dominant? I think the technical phrase in sociological circles is "religion of rule", but that may only apply in cases like parts of Africa or South Asia where the ex-colonial official government language is only spoken by a minority of the population.

[ext_970633]

There are places in the "indigenous" language (in the sense that you are using it, meaning the native language of the dominant stably settled ethnic group) is not English. In New Mexico, for instance, there is a large population that has been in New Mexico since Spaniards immigrated over 400 years ago. In the intervening time, the land became Mexico, and then later joined the United States. The people are not "immigrants" except in the sense that all Americans of European ancestry are immigrants. Their families have been present on that land as long as the land has been part of the United States of America, and have spoken Spanish that whole time.

[pentane]

The US government provides things in a ton of languages. I know in San Francisco at the police department there were information sheets in three foreign alphabets (Korean, Thai, some chinese variant(s)) as well as a lot of other languages.