The campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is building a digital translation platform to help Democrats with their campaign outreach to Latino voters. Bold PAC is releasing the platform Bold Translate, focusing on different topics of interest to Latinos.
Bold Translate launched a limited test focusing on jobs and modules centered around reproductive rights and abortion in commemoration of the first anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that struck down the federal right to an abortion.
“The economy and certainly reproductive health care and choice are two incredibly important things. One of the reasons we have rolled this out so early is our intention is to be able to cover lots of incredibly important political topics throughout the cycle,” said Victoria McGroary, the executive director of Bold PAC.
Each online module includes a glossary of commonly used terms for any campaign issue and examples to use in Democratic messaging translated into Spanish.
For example, the section on jobs directs campaigns on how best to refer to the terms “jobs,” “wages,” “unemployment,” “decreased,” and “leisure & hospitality.”
According to McGroary, the goal is to avoid the sorts of translations that result from the harmful use of online tools or bilingual dictionaries.
“When people are translating, often, they try one-to-one, ‘Let’s take this word, and what does it mean?” McGroary said. “That’s not how we need to do this. And so here we’re just trying to make sure that everyone can understand what is trying to be communicated.”
Because it’s a national toolkit aimed at messaging clarity, Bold Translate deviates from Bold PAC’s usual practice of aggressively adopting regionalisms to micro-target bilingual and Spanish-speaking voters of different national origins.
“We wanted to take a little bit more of a wider lens in that respect, but of course, we would always advocate for … microtargeting,” McGroary said.
The abortion package, for instance, tells campaigns to explain the impact the Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal right to abortion has on Latinas and to “emphasize that Latinas already face several barriers to accessing safe, free abortion and reproductive health care.”
McGroary added she’s not concerned that Republicans will also have access to this publicly available information.
“We aren’t worried about Republicans using the right words to communicate their bad ideas,” she said. “We are focused on making sure our people can communicate all the good we’re doing.”
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