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Dover mayor refuses to create bilingual website

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Despite a letter with the Dover mayor's signature on it accepting an offer to translate parts of the town's website into Spanish, Mayor James Dodd now says he is still opposed to the idea.

In a statement, Dodd said Tuesday night that he is "refusing to create a bilingual town website," and that the letter sent to the Rev. Daniel Martinez, who had offered translation service for free, does not express his true sentiments.

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{"commentId":1575841,"authorDomain":"misslinguistics"}

Very interesting article, thanks for the link!

What's your position on this Chris?

{"commentId":1575841,"threadId":"234357","contentId":"1362292","authorDomain":"misslinguistics"}
  • 2 votes
Reply#1 - Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:28 AM EDT
{"commentId":1579221,"authorDomain":"placenamehere"}

Well, if the offer is being denied for purely political purposes I think its silly. You're in government and you have someone willing to donate their time then why refuse it? That's quite silly and foolish.

With that said, I also know web sites. Depending on how, how well -- how poorly, and how structured and locked down the town's websites are it may not be as easy to add a mirror version of some pages on the site with the translated texts. It may be a legitimate case of needing to find resources that don't exist to go from the 'free' translated text sent to the town's offices in an email and get it up onto the web.

Ultimately, there's probably a workable solution to getting some translated content up on the site in a workable fashion, but maybe not "enough" of a change to make the person complaining about being shut down perfectly happy.

{"commentId":1579221,"threadId":"234357","contentId":"1362292","authorDomain":"placenamehere"}
  • 2 votes
#1.1 - Fri Mar 14, 2008 7:20 PM EDT
{"commentId":1583326,"authorDomain":"misslinguistics"}

Thanks for the practical perspective from the web development-side! I suppose some of us get too carried away by the political issue to think about things pragmatically sometimes!

You make the key point - how can you please everybody in politics?! There are votes in 'including' minorities, and then again votes in not 'pandering' to them!

{"commentId":1583326,"threadId":"234357","contentId":"1362292","authorDomain":"misslinguistics"}
  • 2 votes
#1.2 - Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:31 PM EDT
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