In yet another example of government-endorsed multilingualism gone awry, election officials in San Diego County, Calif., are recalling more than 8,000 copies of the Spanish edition of the local Voter Guide after discovering that the translations were, according to one translator, “horrific.” The 8-1/2 x 14 booklet is being taken from local libraries and city halls after a host of errors were found, including missing words, absent accent marks and incorrect spelling.

“The San Diego voter guide represents just one of thousands of ballots, election handbooks and voter information materials that have been translated for this election,” said U.S. English Chairman Mauro E. Mujica. “There is no telling how many other translation errors have been made, or how many more will crop up between now and Nov. 2. One can only imagine the effect these may have on what is expected to be an extremely close election.”

The rise in translation errors is tied to the rise in multilingual materials as required by recent additions to federal law. The Department of Justice has been relentless in its pursuit of enforcing the unbalanced act, which mandates multilingual voting materials for languages such as Spanish and Japanese, but not others such as Arabic and Italian. In all, more than 300 counties nationwide have been forced to offer ballots in as many as six languages.

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