NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Voters in Nashville, Tenn., have rejected making English the only language used by the city government.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, the measure was defeated on a vote of 41,752 to 32,144.
The vote means the city of nearly 600,000 people refused to become the largest in the United States to prohibit translating written and spoken communications for residents who speak no or little English.
The proposal sparked intense debate. Proponents said using one language would have united the city, but business leaders, academics and the city’s mayor worried it would have given the city a bad reputation. Similar measures have passed elsewhere.
Only 75,000 of the 382,000 voters in Nashville voted.
A rousing, fully committed 20 percent bothered to go to the polls...
Which means only about 11 percent of the eligible voters were in favor of this measure -- and it passed!
What a sad country we have become.
Whoever said, "We get the government we deserve" hit that nail solidly on the head.
Gracias a Dios! Maybe the resolution could have had better vote turnout and even passed if proponents were promoting Esperanto...
I pity the court recorders who write in Urdu or Kanji, Arabic or Sanscrit, Chinese or Korean, even Cherokee.
Of course they don't...they depend on a translator, if one is available. Which may or may not reflect what was actually said. In other words, they are recording the translator's interpretation of events, not the witness'. A form of hearsay. Once in a while, as necessary, translators are OK -- and the new law would have allowed that -- but not as a steady diet. Therein lies chaos.
Look at the controversy over just one misinterpreted word in one of the Ten Commandments; the English "Kill" was written in the original Hebrew [or whatever] as "Murder". Completely different meaning with massive repercussions; you can kill a plant but not murder it. You can kill without malice but not murder without it...soldiers kill the enemy, they don't murder them.
One simple word - one simple mistranslation...
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