Election Day is four days away. Every day of the countdown, Inside The Times will share an article about how our election coverage works. Today, a journalist shares how The Times translates its political coverage into Spanish.
In a widening sea of election misinformation, journalists from The New York Times must provide accurate and up-to-date information on the candidates — in more than one language.
Elda Cantú, a senior editor on the International desk, leads a team of three editors and about a dozen freelance translators who translate select articles into Spanish for readers. There are more than 41 million Spanish speakers in the United States, and her team wants to make sure they are getting as much news as possible.
Every day, Ms. Cantú, who is based in Mexico City, and her team review the articles The Times publishes and translates around a dozen of them — sometimes more. As Election Day nears, translations of political articles have come to represent about one-third of the team’s daily output.
“We think that people who speak Spanish deserve the full experience of The New York Times,” Ms. Cantú said.
Articles in Spanish can be found on a Spanish version of The Times’s home screen and in an email newsletter, El Times. In May, The Times launched a New York Times en Español channel on the messaging platform WhatsApp — a popular communication tool in many parts of Latin America — where Spanish-speaking users can find translated articles. And on Election Day, the team will provide live coverage in Spanish.
In an interview, Ms. Cantú discussed the translation process, international interest in U.S. elections and the role her team plays in making election coverage accessible for more readers. This conversation has been edited.
How are Times articles translated into Spanish?
I work with two editors, Patricia Nieto and Sabrina Duque. We collaborate very closely with the different parts of the newsroom and the Audience team to pick our potential stories every day. That’s the first part of that translation process: curation. And we get input from reporters and editors who are working on stories that they think our readers will appreciate having in Spanish.
Once we have a list of stories, we assign the translation to different people working with our team on a freelance capacity. They are in several continents and time zones, and that helps us be quick on our feet. Once they have done the first translation, it goes through at least one or two layers of editing. Hopefully it’s quick, but most importantly, it’s clear, accurate and faithful to the original.
You’ve previously described your team’s purpose as serving a curious, globally minded Spanish readership. How does that mission come into play during an event like a U.S. presidential election?
The Times is in a very important position to reach not only our readers in the United States, but also readers abroad who speak Spanish and want to know how this election is going. There’s huge interest in both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. We can tell our Spanish readers: What is at stake?
We just worked with the Graphics team to produce a poll tracker in Spanish. We found that people want to know how well one candidate is doing week to week. The Times has to reach people where they are, and that means in their own language. People want to know what’s happening in the United States, because what happens in the United States is important also in their communities.
You mentioned polling. It can be arcane even for American readers, and the polling system is particular to the United States. What are the obstacles to translating polling news for an international audience?
It’s hard because there’s the methodology, and also the intricacies of the language. The most important thing is that it’s clear in translation. So our first principle is always accuracy. And then we want to be easily understood, and that requires some back and forth with our team and the polling team on certain terms, like “horse race,” or “blue state” and “red state.” If you only say “rojo” and “azul,” it’s not enough, right? You have to think about someone who might be reading who’s not completely proficient in a particular topic.
Another pillar of election coverage at The Times and across English-language news media is providing factual information amid a flood of disinformation. Spanish-speaking communities in the United States were also the targets of misinformation campaigns in the last presidential election. Does your team consider that as you’re thinking about translating election reporting?
One of the most important reasons we are leaning on election coverage is that we know that misinformation spreads through different channels. So we are not only translating the stories about misinformation targeting Spanish-speaking communities, but also providing information that debunks it. And one crucial way to do that is to through a WhatsApp channel.
WhatsApp isn’t used as widely in the United States as it is in other places. But it’s a huge channel of communication. If that’s where some bad information is spreading, we want to be in that same place, and we want our journalism to be accessible and easy to share and to understand.
Both parties are fighting over Latino voters, particularly Latino men. Someone who’s Latino doesn’t necessarily speak Spanish. How important is it that these voter groups have an opportunity to read your articles?
We want to make sure our journalism provides people with the opportunity to make better choices. And if we can do that in Spanish to help people make political decisions, or to better understand their neighbors, that’s a great thing. The Politics reporters Jennifer Molina and Jazmine Ulloa are already reporting on these issues and clarifying a lot of things. And so our thought is: What if we can also clarify all of these things in Spanish for people who will be super important for the election?
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