Spanglish Obamacare Website Makes Less Sense Than a Telemundo Gameshow
Hola sirs, please to be checking el site CuidadoElSalud.gov if you are in needing of excelente coverages of your loveds for the Obama health plans. This is why our name of the website is en español "For the Caution of Health." Mija, what the fuck are these cabrónes federal on about?
For Obamacare to "work," apparently many Latinos have to sign up. (Also, because it would be a good idea for them to have health coverage, morally speaking.) To maximize the odds, Healthcare.gov has a Spanish-language mirror site... only it's virtually incomprehensible on multiple fronts, according to the AP:
The site, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, launched more than two months late.
A Web page with Spanish instructions linked users to an English form.
And the translations were so clunky and full of grammatical mistakes that critics say they must have been computer-generated...
"When you get into the details of the plans, it's not all written in Spanish. It's written in Spanglish, so we end up having to translate it for them," said Adrian Madriz, a health care navigator who helps with enrollment in Miami.
That's kind of a big deal, since Latinos make up a third or more of uninsured Americans in states like Florida, and many don't speak English as a first language. There are technical, non-linguistic issues, too. But for native Spanish speakers seeking Affordable Care Act-compliant coverage, the site is a mechanized mess:
Plaza, the New Mexico professor, said a recent examination by her research students concluded that the translations were done "by a computer-generated process" and came across as awkward.
"There are problems with the verbs and word order that make sentences hard to understand," said Plaza, who helped develop an audio version to help residents in New Mexico sign up.
"Sometimes," she added, "it's just the terms they use."
The website translates "premium" into "prima," but that Spanish word is more commonly used to mean a female cousin, Plaza said. A more accurate translation, she said, would be "cuotas," ''couta mensual" or "costo annual."
Univision, which has pushed hard on air and in its newsrooms to get the word on health care reform out to U.S. Latinos, has an online glossary to acquaint users with Spanish-language insurance-industry neologisms, like the "prima" term mentioned above—along with copagos and coseguros. In the meantime, Spanish speakers can use the site to find local assistance with health care, if they dare.