Workforce Language Services

The North Lake Tahoe Bonanza has begun providing one page of its Sunday newspaper each week translated into Spanish. It’s a great idea to engage their Spanish speaking audiences and to show they are trying to meet them half way – and a great way to market themselves to a new population. However, they have gotten a lot of push back from some of their readership. The paper responded to this with a well-written and heartfelt commentary. To them language is a bridge (I’ve heard that before…). To those who wrote into the Bonanza saying that they were anti-American, they responded with the following:

It is a bridge to a group of people who call Incline Village home.

The Latino community in Incline Village is not a faceless entity, as some portray it. The community is composed of individuals with hopes and dreams, students attending our schools, workers in our businesses, people whose paychecks are a part of our economy and whose culture adds some diversity to our lives.

The ones who are most adamantly against a Spanish-language page seem to also speak in generalizations, as if they do not personally know someone of a different race and can only respond with their biases. We hope the Spanish-language page will be a bridge that puts faces on another culture living here in our hometown.

The Spanish-language page in the Sunday Bonanza is not going to make a difference whether someone chooses to speak English or not. Although, it is entirely possible that the Spanish page will encourage someone to read the rest of the paper in English.

To the Bonanza, congratulations. Read more.