Internet offers Spanish translation of presidential debates

The financial crisis managed to crowd out questions about foreign affairs during the first of three scheduled debates between the major presidential candidates, which turned into a tepid affair Friday in which both candidates made weak attempts at one-liners against each other.

Democrat Barack Obama accused Republican challenger John McCain of making untrue statements about his record, while McCain at points accused Obama of being “confused” about specifics of federal government policy.

“I DON’T EVEN have a seal yet,” McCain said at one point of Obama, who earlier this year had a new campaign logo that resembled the presidential seal to such a degree that some pundits took it as a sign he was getting too cocky.

In short, there really wasn’t a clear debate “winner.” Questions that might be relevant to issues directly affecting the growing Latino population were scarce.

In fact, the closest to a “Latino” issue that came up was when McCain tried to trash Obama’s previously expressed willingness to talk with Iran leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even when he makes threats to the national security of U.S. ally Israel.

McCain ran through a “laundry list” of dictators that included Venezuela President Hugo Chavez and Cuba leader Raul Castro as being the types of people to whom a President Obama would “give more credence in the world.”

TO WHICH OBAMA responded, “I’ll talk to anyone if it has the chance to keep America safe.”

That is why the aspect of the debate in Oxford, Miss., that intrigued me the most was the way in which I viewed it – both off a television tuned to a PBS affiliate in the Chicago area and off the Internet.

Watching the debate on the same laptop computer upon which I now write this commentary allowed me to hear a Spanish-language translation of the political event that McCain threatened to cancel because he was going to single-handedly resolve the financial industry’s problems.

ImpreMedia literally set up a portion of their website (http://www.impremedia.com/) to allow people to watch the debates live in English – with voices dubbing the words of the politicos (and of debate moderator Jim Lehrer) “en Español.”

I WAS AMAZED at how quickly they were able to handle the translation.

There literally was the fact that my two images were NOT in sync. The Internet image was about two seconds ahead of the image I saw and heard on television.

That literally meant that I heard words in Spanish from my laptop simultaneous with the pictures on my television.

That’s good. It is nowhere near as distracting as the concept of some translations, where the dubbed commentary or subtitles come to one question just as another one is being asked.

SO IT LITERALLY became possible for those people of the growing Latino population who have an interest in the presidential campaigns this year to pick which language we’d rather hear the event in.

That is important, because many people in this country who identify themselves to the Census Bureau as “Hispanic” do speak both English and Spanish – regardless of what the nitwits of our society want to believe.

In some cases, the people who pick Spanish are more interested in getting a different perspective on information than they would get if they limited themselves purely to the English-language broadcasts.

In my case, hearing dialogue in both English and Spanish helped to stress certain lines of dialogue from both Obama and McCain.

BUT IF SOMEONE thought that watching the Spanish-language version would add more information, the program added little. It was just dubbed voices – and whoever picked the translators followed the same theory of Japanese baseball public address announcers.

Women were used for the voices of Obama, McCain and Lehrer, which created differing personalities for the candidates than those who heard their real voices would get.

In my mind, Obama became the voice of a telephone operator while McCain was a stern schoolteacher. And Lehrer was the harried girl desperately trying to keep up with the political duo.

So I don’t know if I will try to listen/watch dueling broadcasts of the remaining presidential debates.

BUT I LIKELY will use the site for an exclusive listen to at least one of the upcoming debates. Or perhaps I should use it for the vice presidential debate scheduled for Thursday in St. Louis?

The thought of Sarah Palin dubbed into Spanish could give the event a comical tone that would make the event more memorable.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Future debates in the Campaign ’08 election cycle will be translated (http://www3.impre.com/debates/) into Spanish as well.

My Space is becoming something more than a place to find candid photographs (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/impremedia-myspace-join-forces-present/story.aspx?guid=%7BDCB481FD-3D50-4FEF-B205-6FFC8C569141%7D&dist=hppr) and other personal details about complete strangers.

Viewers of the debates yet to be held in Nashville, Tenn., Hempstead, N.Y., and St. Louis can use (http://www.debates.org/pages/news_111907.html) this Spanish translation, if they are so inclined.