I don’t know you, but I did tune in Univision at 7:00 pm sharp Sunday night for the first presidential debate on Spanish-language television, pitched by the network as the first ever “custom-made” debate for U.S. Hispanics… Those were some challenging 90 minutes!
While the debate was pitched as the first-ever “Spanish-language forum,” the only ones allowed to speak Spanish were the moderators: Univision’s Maria Elena Salinas and Jorge Ramos. The candidates –who wore earpieces to hear an interpreter translate the moderators’ questions– had all agreed to answer only in English (a bummer, really, only for Bill Richardson, who grew up in Mexico City. “Fine by me!” seemed to think the others.)
The rest of us, watching from our living room, were submitted to a real arroz con mango; with the candidates hearing the questions in Spanish, responding in English; the interpreters saying things like “escuela elemental” presumably for “escuela primaria” or “reversar el curso” for “revertir el curso;” the moderators shooshing the candidates in Spanish, and Richardson insisting on speaking Spanish and annoying the hell out of the moderators.
To make matters worse, some reporters covering the debate at the University of Miami complained that the translation devices didn’t quite fit in their ears, and that 90 seconds before the forum began tonight, the Media Room had no sound “not in Spanish, English or French. Nada,” said the Washington Times.
All in all, it made for very good entertainment, though I’m not sure the candidates will be able to beat another promising ratings-buster Sunday night: a special appearance of RBD in Buscando a Timbiriche. Place your bets!
MI BLOG ES TU BLOG 
You’re not kidding about the “arroz con mango”. I don’t know if you caught other Angliscisms in the translation such as “un plan comprensivo” for comprehensive (should have been “integral, todo abarcador, completo, etc”). Bringing the troops home was translated as “traerlos a casa”, instead of “devolverlos a su patria o su país”, bi-partisan was “bipartisano”instead of the correct word “bipartidario” and when Obama said that there will be more brown people, it was translated as “gente carmelita”, then corrected to”marron”, instead of saying “mestizos”.
I think the Republicans should reschedule their Spanish dubbed debate for September 16 in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Adrian
http://www.calmagazine.com
There is more than an inmigration reform that afect more than some 12 million people in this country. There is the increase of taxes or what I will called the less money in our pockets, there is also the protection of what we still consider a family between a man and a woman, help keep abortions at a minimum, give small buisness more oportuniyies to grow, improving the economy, the protection of our country and more things like that. univision will put most of the atention in the inmigration issues, and we would not likr to hear people telling us what they are really planning to do than just promising us the sun and the stars like the democrats did.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
am not agree either with the “translations”