The Romney campaign has been reaching out to Latino voters by running Spanish-language versions of ads also running for English-language audiences that contain awkward Spanish translations, reports the Los Angeles Times.
From the Times:
“Día Uno” talks about what the first day of a Romney presidency would look like, outlining objectives such as opening the Keystone oil pipeline and ending the healthcare law. “Van Bien?” picks up on an Obama comment that the private sector is “doing fine,” and asks how the president can fix the economy if he doesn’t understand it.
What’s more, some of the phrases in those ads are awkwardly translated, said Melisa Diaz, a Latino media consultant based inWashington, D.C., who has worked for the Democratic National Committee.
“Doing Fine?” would be more accurately translated as “Las cosas están bien?” Diaz said, while the proper phrase to convey “the right direction” would be “la dirección correcta,” not “la buena dirección,” as used in the ads. And the English idiom “Day One” would be better if phrased “El Primer Día,” not “Día Uno,” Diaz said.
“These kind of mistakes would not happen in an English-language ad,” she said. “You can tell that the ads were not proofed by a native speaker.”
The articles notes that neither campaign has the kind of sophisticated outreach to the Latino community that businesses now have, but the Obama campaign is spending fairly heavily on Spanish-language media, whereas the Romney campaign is not.
Romney spent just $33,000 on Spanish-language ads between mid-April and mid-June in the battleground states of North Carolina and Ohio, while Obama spent $1.7 million over the same period, according to SMG-Delta.
