International Business: Elections lost in translation

Considering these potential challenges, government officials should solicit the right types of language services for crucial ballot information. Perhaps machine translation will be sufficient to provide the "gist" of general, non-essential voting information, as is available in many languages for Ontario Canada's instructional voting videos on YouTube. Sometimes amateur bilingual assistance from family, friends and poll workers can also be a benefit to those needing general information. However, automated or amateur translation of essential information on actual ballots runs the risk of wasting taxpayer dollars when the law consequently requires corrections to keep elections fair.

We all hope the good civil servants in Salt Lake County and other local governments will be motivated — and educated — to use high quality professional services, not merely free online services or non-native bilingual employees, to translate multilingual ballots. Government employees may not have a traditional profit motive, but taxpaying businesses and citizens are always grateful when the government takes reasonable steps to get things right the first time.

Adam Wooten is director of translation services at Lingotek, a translation technology company based in Lehi, Utah. He also teaches a course on translation technology at Brigham Young University and has taught similar courses at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Email: awooten@lingotek.com. Follow him on Twitter at AdamWooten.