Early voting starts in Arizona in less than a month, and this year’s ballot will be a long one. And, officials have been working to translate that ballot into other languages, as required by federal law.
Jen Fifield, a reporter with Votebeat, recently attended a meeting where the translating process was taking place for Navajo and joined The Show to talk about how it is both challenging and controversial.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Tell me a little bit about what this meeting was like because it's something I think most people have not seen.
JEN FIFIELD: Right. So as you know, we have a very long and complicated ballot. This year, we have 13 long propositions that are very complex and very controversial. So this meeting was meant to bring a translator together with county and state officials to nail down exact language in Navajo that voters will then hear, be able to hear through audio recordings or poll workers at the polls.
This is because Navajo is a traditionally oral language, so they weren't actually creating a physical ballot, but they did have to get the wording very precise to match this very precise and well argued language on some of these controversial measures.
BRODIE: How easy or difficult was that to do? Because I would imagine there are some words that are in, for example, policy that might not sort of roll off the tongue in other languages.
FIFIELD: Definitely not. And especially these very historical languages that are oral. So you might not have a word for you know, government in, in the same way that you do. That's a bad example.
But these more complicated government words, they actually came up with a dictionary though here to kind of translate the more common words. What we're really looking at and they're struggling with is these words in the propositions, that are like abortion or border crossing or you know, sex trafficking or some of the words that they might not have traditionally in their language.
BRODIE: One of the words you wrote about that I thought was so interesting was the word fentanyl, and how there's no word in, in the Navajo language for that. But the translators were trying to figure out like what almost, what other words and what meaning they were trying to get across by using that word.
FIFIELD: That was a really interesting conversation because you can see that, you know, if you're trying to translate the word fentanyl, you're trying to tell people that it's a drug, it's not a medicine, it's not a healing, it's, it's not meant to heal. But when you look at our English language proposition and this was talking about, you know, criminalizing selling fentanyl that causes the death of a person. We're not really explaining what fentanyl that is.
So they have to take their own liberties. And I think that's why it was important to get the group of people in the room. Although there were complaints that this wasn't a completely open process.
BRODIE: Yeah, I'm curious about that and also some complaints that you reported on about the actual translations like how they turned out both in this election and in prior ones.
FIFIELD: So there's been complaints about these traditionally oral languages. This is a requirement under federal law that counties if they have a certain percentage of people who speak a certain language and don't speak English well, they need to do this. They're required to under federal law.
For years, you know, the Navajo Nation has been trying to get better trans a for their residents and we have a settlement agreement here telling them how to do that. And there's also groups like the Human Rights Commission, the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, that's been listening to these translations after they're done and saying that they do want a seat at the table when it's done to try to make sure that the translation is accurate.
BRODIE: Why were some of the groups and some of the people who were left out of this meeting left out? Like for example, the president of the Navajo Nation was apparently not invited to this.
FIFIELD: What I was told from the Secretary of State's Office is they were trying to make it a smooth process where the translator could meet and there wouldn't be much disruption. You know, but when I talk to translating experts on this, it is best to get context from the community itself on how that they, how they speak and their different dialects. And so having some of that outside feedback would have been helpful.
But I think that with, the state's process is actually a lot better than happens across the country, which is a sad thing. But, you know, some places have not met at all, they haven't translated different parts of the ballot. And so the fact that they are meeting and trying does say something about Arizona right now.
BRODIE: Is there an estimate as far as how many people will need this translation? Either the, the written one or the audio.
FIFIELD: There wasn't, but we did take a look at some census data, Votebeat, when we did this story. So there's around 71,000 Arizonans of voting age in, that speak Navajo. And about one in 10 of them aren't fluent in English. And so this translation would be helpful to them, not saying that all of them would need it. A lot of the elders, that's what they call more older adults in Navajo culture, bring their family or do this at home.
So you know how many people will need this at the polls is going to be less than that one in 10, but it's still a requirement that it's available.
BRODIE: Right. And will there be actual translators on site at polling places on election day if people choose to go that direction?
FIFIELD: Well, there should be, and there's argument about what kind of translator you might need. Do you just need a poll worker who speaks Navajo? Do you need a professional translator? I think right now, a lot of counties will rely on people, poll workers who speak Navajo that aren't official translators.
With so much debate about the English language of this proposition, those translators might not be doing it exactly the way that the ballot says, which could be, you know, in issues such as abortion, important to watch, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write this story to tell people how it was and wasn't happening.
BRODIE: That's a really interesting point because as we know, there was a lot of disagreement about the English words that would be used in the, in the ballot, especially the summaries of the propositions. I can only imagine how difficult it is to try to capture exactly that in another language, be it Navajo or really any other language, right?
FIFIELD: And some of the professional translators I spoke to this story really emphasize that you're not supposed to add more context. You're not, you know, that's incorrect. You, you can't give people more context than what's on the ballot. You can explain it well and do it correctly. But, you know, you shouldn't be making up your own explanation.
So it really is going to be, you know, depending on the person, depending on how well they read the translation that's provided to them and if they can read it, too. I's all gonna depend on where you're at and where you choose to vote.
BRODIE: So based on some of the experts with whom you spoke, like obviously the, the process in Arizona isn't perfect, but I wonder if there's a sense that it's not perfect, but it's probably the best that we can do right now or are there ideas for maybe how to do this better?
FIFIELD: Well, I think I spoke with Allison Neswood, who is with the Native American Voting Rights Organization. They sue, they sue counties that aren't doing this correctly. She said she really doesn't know if any counties are doing this absolutely correct.
If she took a closer look, the process isn't very translation, transparent, so she might not be able to do that. But if you do look, you're going to find problems. They just emphasized, you know, involving the community as much as you can, having two professional translators who can bounce things off one of each other and trying to stick to just what's on the ballot. So we're going to see how well Arizona did that this year.
You can hear condensed versions of all 13 Arizona ballot propositions in Navajo and Hopi via Sun Sounds of Arizona.
