Much more tomorrow on today's nutty press conference held by Tan Nguyen, the man who proclaimed this afternoon he would defeat Loretta Sanchez and blasted the Republican leadership for abandoning him (Tan Nguyen is the new Bob Dornan–we said it first until someone proves otherwise!). Nguyen and a campaign spokesperson claimed their infamous letter to Latinos in the 47th District warning that illegals and immigrants can't vote was wrongly interpreted–the Mexican Spanish word the world took for “immigrant” in the line, emigrado, actually refers to an immigrant who hasn't become a citizen but is in the country legally. We originally dismissed the semantics as laughable, but a call to mami y papi proved Nguyen right–but even then, the debate between my parents was loooong. Point is: Mexican Spanish is full of it.
However, we noticed something strange in the English translation of the letter that Nguyen distributed to an impatient press corp (more tomorrow) and insisted was the correct version that should've been translated into Spanish. A line in the Nguyen camp's translation states, “Private anti-immigration organizations may also bring a law suit to have access to this new computer system.”
Problem is, there is nothing even close to that in the original Spanish letter. The sentence in question that corresponds to the above translation states, “Organizaciones en contra de la emigración podrán pedir información de este nuevo sistema computarizado.” The literal, mami-approved translation of this is “Organizations against immigration will be able to ask for information from this new computer system.” (The computer system in question, according to the letter, will verify all new voters in the upcoming election). Nothing about lawyers, nothing about “private,” nothing about “access.” Nguyen said a “respected” Spanish translator did the work for him. Awright, Nguyen folks: care to comment? (Probably not: neither Nguyen or his camp took many questions about much at the conference–more on that tomorrow).
More coverage at OC Blog, The Liberal OC, Orange Juice, and Andrew's Wild and Wonderful Blog.
