Lost in Translation: Immigrant communities
struggle to get timely information
about COVID-19 in native languages
KSTP-TV [Minneapolis St. Paul],
by
Eric Rasmussen
Original Article
Posted By: voxpopuli,
5/9/2020 10:01:35 AM
The daily and hourly flood of critical information about the COVID-19 crisis has made communicating with immigrant communities in Minnesota a challenging and frustrating task, leaving some non-English speakers struggling to access public health and financial resources. (snip) Yang, whose family arrived in St. Paul from a refugee camp in Thailand in 1979, said the current crisis reminds him of those times.
"It brings back vivid memories of the refugee camp where you're shut down. Your circle – you're supposed to stay in the camp. You're not supposed to leave," Yang said.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Ribicon 5/9/2020 10:07:52 AM (No. 405875)
Snatched cruelly from their homes in paradise and placed squarely onto the backs of the US taxpayers, whose largesse and accommodations are never enough. FTA: "Ensuring that information was being properly translated was such a challenge during the early days of the pandemic that the state health department started funneling more than $1 million to community organizations to help address the issue."
17 people like this.
If you wish to live here, then you MUST learn to speak, read and write English.
42 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Chuzzles 5/9/2020 10:13:40 AM (No. 405887)
English is the language spoken here. Biggest problem is they do not want to assimilate any more than they have to, to get the welfare and other benefits. I have no sympathy for these people. Come to somebody else's country? Learn the darn language folks.
41 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
LadyHen 5/9/2020 10:18:36 AM (No. 405889)
Can you imagine living in a country for 5+ years and never learning the language? Me neither. But then I'm not lazy and stupid. Why do we want lazy, stupid immigrants? We don't but Democrats do.
36 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
earlybird 5/9/2020 10:21:36 AM (No. 405894)
What OP said. I am tired of these ungrateful, complaining “refugees”...
28 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
earlybird 5/9/2020 10:25:24 AM (No. 405899)
Cripes! Missed that they were Hmongs. California has had to suffer with these people-who-want-to-stay-primitive for decades. A batch of them were brought here and parked. They have held on to their own language, their own customs (including child marriages, as I recall), same old, same old. Zero interest in assimilating. Time for them to be transported back to the heaven they came from. Good use of some of our money.
22 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
jalo1951 5/9/2020 10:27:01 AM (No. 405901)
OK, so we need to have every government edict translated verbally and in writing into 650 different languages because you have no need to learn English?f I don't think so.
19 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
AltaD 5/9/2020 10:32:24 AM (No. 405907)
Hmong refugees arrived in the US 40 years ago, so how on earth can there still be a language barrier? Even if some of the first wave of immigrants never learned English, their children and grandchildren certainly do. There is simply no need for the government to spend money on "outreach" programs.
21 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
earlybird 5/9/2020 10:33:23 AM (No. 405909)
The Hmong are members of an ethnic group that have not had a country of their own. For thousands of years, the Hmong lived in southwestern China. But when the Chinese began limiting their freedom in the mid-1600s, many migrated to Laos, Thailand and other neighboring countries.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/01/10-things-hmong (Link is to a bright and breezy article from Minnesota Public Radio about how super the Hmong are and how good it is to have them, bla bla bla)
Now there are settlements of these people all over the world. Here they are concentrated in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Central Valley of California (Fresno area). Brought here by the same Catholic, Lutheran and other charities that were so kind to facilitate the illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America. And the Hmong breed their own brand of rabble-rousers...
18 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 5/9/2020 10:39:07 AM (No. 405914)
English should be the official language of the USA. No one should be given even one jar of government peanut butter without being able to speak our language.
23 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Blizzard 5/9/2020 10:46:03 AM (No. 405930)
Honestly, I could not care less. Go back to your home country.
13 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
curious1 5/9/2020 10:47:42 AM (No. 405932)
If it's so terrible here, there's nothing stopping them from going to another country. But of course, that's not the issue, is it?
12 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
hershey 5/9/2020 10:48:58 AM (No. 405937)
If they all learned english when they came, they wouldn't have this problem...
12 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Philipsonh 5/9/2020 10:53:47 AM (No. 405948)
There is nothing more to say than Reply #2's comment.
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
kiwinews 5/9/2020 11:04:00 AM (No. 405967)
I went to work in another country as an adult. NO official documents were available in english. I learned their language, obeyed their laws and paid their exorbitant taxes. It is easiest to learn a language in a "saturation" environment, provided you do not spend all your energy avoiding it and deliberately clinging to your own. Where toddlers and the very dogs are speaking the native language, you can too.
8 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 5/9/2020 11:23:59 AM (No. 405994)
So learn English. No sympathy at all. I have watched non-English speakers pick up a useful grasp of the language in a few weeks.
IMO if you haven't learned enough English to get buy in a year, you are TRYING to avoid it.
YOUR fault.
13 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Ribicon 5/9/2020 11:35:15 AM (No. 406016)
Federal law enables people to use whatever language they like, provided they reach a certain proportion of the local areas, with translation services funded at crippling expense by US taxpayers. Same as with the accommodations required under the Americans With Disabilities Act, libraries, voting materials, public schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, etc all cost more than they should, under the peril of lawsuits. Does anyone recall when this law was passed? It smells like a Poppy Bush initiative, though it could easy have come from Slick Willie.
8 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
bighambone 5/9/2020 11:54:35 AM (No. 406038)
Where are all the so-called community organizers, who speak all the immigrant languages, who we have been told are supposed to be populating immigrant communities? You would thing that putting out such important public health related information to their immigrant communities would be right in their wheelhouse?
5 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Rather Read 5/9/2020 12:04:30 PM (No. 406048)
I had a student from Mongolia. He taught himself English before he came here by watching YouTube tutorials. He graduated and is working and happy. He did it right.
13 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Vaquero45 5/9/2020 12:31:14 PM (No. 406075)
When I was a kid, my family moved to a neighborhood of brand-new houses. The family next door was from Holland. They’d been here about a year. They all had a rudimentary grasp of English, and the kids learned fast, playing with all the neighborhood children and watching TV. By the time they moved away four years later, the kids sounded and acted like they’d been born here. It’s not that hard....
7 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
cor-vet 5/9/2020 12:36:34 PM (No. 406083)
Let the same people that are translating all the paperwork that is required to access American freebies, translate for them, or did they learn enough of the language to be able to do that?
4 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
bad-hair 5/9/2020 1:15:00 PM (No. 406137)
So why is it when i search Google for Covid in Somali every website says GO THE F Home And TAKE ILHAN OMAR WITH YOU. MAGA
6 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
RuckusTom 5/9/2020 1:29:41 PM (No. 406155)
It'd be pretty easy if all "immigrants" spoke English before coming here.
1 person likes this.
Oh the “struggle”...
More enemedia agenda
2 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
fishbone 5/9/2020 2:14:17 PM (No. 406194)
Two words: GO BACK!
4 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
Gruntmedic 5/9/2020 3:25:33 PM (No. 406258)
Learn English,you have been here since 1979.
State has English classes as second language.
3 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
NYbob 5/9/2020 3:34:12 PM (No. 406262)
This is our own fault for not requiring the 'sponsors' of these parasites to be responsible for them. That was the rule for hundreds of years until the uniparty rolled over for the murderer Teddy and his open borders insanity.
1 person likes this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
Strike3 5/9/2020 3:39:26 PM (No. 406266)
One plane ticket will solve all of your problems, Homes. I hear they have a lot of openings over there for pirates due to attrition. Can you say, "Arrr?"
3 people like this.
Reply 29 - Posted by:
Butch 5/9/2020 4:19:30 PM (No. 406299)
When you imigrate to another country from the country of your birth, you learn the language. I live in Colombia, and therefore I had to learn Spanish, no big deal. A lot of people in the U.S. (and in Colombia, sadly) don´t bother to crack a book and start learning.
In the United States, you speak Englisj in handling your affairs. If you want to speak Thai at home, fine, but Americans do not conduct business in Thai, so sorry.
2 people like this.
Reply 30 - Posted by:
lakerman1 5/9/2020 5:03:42 PM (No. 406329)
speak God's language - English.
1 person likes this.
Reply 31 - Posted by:
bobn.t 5/28/2020 8:27:00 PM (No. 424815)
English is our national language. Learn english
0 people like this.
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Comments:
oh.. this INGRATE came over here in 1979??!! and his worthless family STILL can't get used to freedom? talk about MORE useless stories about the Fake Hoax.. wow..