It's difficult to believe that it's been four months since I've posted anything new to the IAL blog. Perhaps that's a clue that things have been busy here at headquarters. Busy but exciting.
If you are a regular reader of InAnyLanguage then you might recall in January I posted a piece called The Politics of Language which summarized a comprehensive study IAL Services conducted on each of the presidential candidate's web sites and how they either were or were not targeting the Hispanic constituency. The post was the single largest traffic driver of anything I've posted and was even picked up by RealClearPolitics, a political web venture between CNN and TIME Magazine.
I'm not sure if the IAL study had anything to do with the work we received afterwords but I must say what followed proved to be an exciting Spring.
We have had the privilege over the past several months to work with the Hillary Clinton campaign as it relates to Hispanic radio advertising. Our work was coordinated through one of her advertising agencies here in the U.S. It had nothing to do with IAL's political leanings or philosophies but rather our ability to put together a rapid response team of qualified translators who collaborated on content that needed to be placed in media markets where election Primaries were upcoming. It was as close as I've ever had the opportunity in being involved in a political campaign and, I must confess, the pace at which they move is, at the very least, impressive.
Over the past several years we've had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies who are crafting a message for consumer product launches, IPO's, shareholder statements and press releases. These are all extremely important ventures but when you know that your message may or may not influence what many people consider to be the most powerful position in the world it certainly gives you pause to think.
Unlike traditional advertising, political messages are many times crafted at the last minute based on internal polling, global events or headline news. They change on a dime and require immediate attention every time. When you compound the issue that the original message has been written in English and now needs to be translated into Spanish for potential voters in Los Angeles or San Juan, the enormity of it hits you.
The pace and the pressure, many times, can become a drag on your day but when you're working with professional agencies like we had and have a network of equally professional linguists it's nothing but pure adrenalin and excitement. Something I would welcome every day. My sincere appreciation to everyone who assisted us with these projects. The constant last minute changes, the clarification of phrasing, the explanations and suggestions of better ways to get the message across, - all many times with less than four hours to complete - demonstrated how fortunate we are to have the team that we've assembled. They are all true professionals.
I've received a lot of emails over the last several days - some kind, some not - reminding me that the candidate we worked so hard on was not successful. As a vendor I regret that but it's never been our position to choose sides, only to provide an essential service in bridging a language gap. At the same time, I do remind them that our client overwhelmingly won the Hispanic vote. Was that a result of all our hard work? Probably not but it's fun to think we may have been a tiny part of history. Perhaps.
