Posted by
Andrews on Friday, April 04, 2008 1:54:33 PM
I know it will upset some, but I am in favor of declaring a national language. I think for convenience it should be English, but I really don't care. It could be Latin or Urdu or Punic or Esperanto, so long as we have a single official language.
To which I am sure the left will reply, "Why?" In their minds trying to establish a national language is a matter of "cultural hegemony", our attempt to impose our values on immigrants. But it is nothing of the kind. There are two very clear benefits to a national language, regardless of what language we choose, and those have nothing to do with "cultural imperialism"*.
First, if we have no official language we will be constantly deluged with requests that every official document be printed in every language imaginable. This sounds petty, but it isn't. One only has to look at the cost projections for a Democrat primary re-run in Florida to see how expensive printing is for the state. If we standardize on a single language, we will have to print every official document, every ballot, every law, everything, in just one form. It sounds unimportant, but the saving will be quite substantial.
The second concern is even more important. If we have only a single language, we will have laws in only a single language, and that is very important. If the state itself prints translations of laws in other languages, it could be argued that those translations also have the force of law. That being the case, the possibility of a mistranslation frightens me. It opens up the possibility of laws being unintentionally (or possibly intentionally) modified without notice or debate in the process of printing them in another language. By limiting ourselves to a single official language, this issue will not arise. Anything printed in another language will be unofficial, and therefore not binding.
Now I have heard some silly arguments against this, such as "courts won't be allowed to use translators" or "hospitals can't print signs in Spanish". That is just absurd. it is possible some badly drafted laws may have resulted in those outcomes, but they are not inherent on standardizing on English. The only results I can see are as follows:
1. Official documents will exist in one language
2. Official proceedings will be conducted only in one language
3. State offices will not be legally required to provide translation free of charge, they may still choose to do so, but will not be obligated
That hardly seems like the end of the world to me. Until recently, that was the de facto situation anyway, even if there were no laws backing it. But, as our litigious society will spawn lawsuits if a law does not explicitly define every right and responsibility**, I suppose we need to codify what was once just an assumption.
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* There may be additional benefits to standardizing on the majority language, such as speeding assimilation, but for the moment I am ignoring those.
** It is hard to imagine someone in the 19th century suing for their "right" to have the state pay for a translator so they could apply for welfare. Yet, now that would hardly raise an eyebrow.