Lost in Tanslation

Rebel Girl Grades Tan Nguyen's Letter

"Es verdad. Washington bullets again."

—The Clash, "Sandinista!"

Rebel Girl has been following the brouhaha over candidate Tan Nguyen's letter to prospective voters. Let's be more specific: his intimidating and fraudulent letter to 14,000 prospective voters with Spanish surnames. Let's be specific, and accurate, too: brouhaha without much ha-ha, and shock —shock! —to discover that gambling (voter fraud) is going on in Casablanca County.

Rebel Girl feels left out. Though she boasts a terrific Spanish surname, one of the most popular and easy to pronounce, she herself did not receive one of the letters because she dwells outside the 47th Congressional District. Most of her political mail celebrates the governor posing with charismatic (hot, hot, hot!) Latino leaders and declaring his devotion to education. Yeah, right.

No, like many of you, she had to track the epistle/evidence down on the internet. Then, pocha as she is, she had to find an English translation. Sigh. Life is rough for a second generation Mexican-American. And they say we don't assimilate. Sheesh.

Mild-mannered professor of English that she is, Rebel Girl has spent the weekend pondering the text.

Granted, there was much to ponder beginning with, what was Tan Nguyen thinking? And what did Rebel Girl's favorite college trustee and Nguyen's advisor, Tom "My family swam over from Spain— I'm no Mexican" Fuentes know and when did he know it?

But really, she looked at it with the eyes of a person who has graded college student writing for the last 15 years. And what did she see?

Rebel Girl reviewed her grading standards. She considered in terms of what we like to call the rubric. The letter was a C, at best, C minus maybe. A C grade meant satisfactory, sometime marginally so. It showed an understanding of the basic ideas and information involved in the assignment but it may also have had some factual, interpretive or conceptual errors. Clearly the writer's intent was clear, even though his execution was ineffective. In a C-level paper, the writer's argument is sometimes only partially developed, with little analysis, with limited use of textual evidence. With its five scant paragraphs, the Nguyen letter was certainly that. The arrangement of a C-level paper may not appear entirely natural or smooth, with some awkward transitions, a few weakly unified or undeveloped paragraphs. This was most definitely true of Nguyen's work, especially the last two paragraphs. While there was an attempt to create a sense of transition between the paragraphs, the grand leaps each one made, coupled with a complete lack of sources to verify their outstanding (sic) claims, made this work marginal at best. In fact, the more Rebel Girl thought about it, and got herself worked up, the more she thought this work was not at college level after all, not a marginally passing paper. And that even without considering the occasional wordy sentences structure and awkward word choices she felt the need to wince.

So, finally, it failed.

Okay, granted, the letter was a translation. For all she knew it might, in the original Spanish have been a work comparable to Carlos Fuentes' The Death of Artemio Cruz or perhaps something by Borges: you know, prismatic and labyrinthine, what those folks call magical realism. Okay, so perhaps it was unfair to grade the translation. She planned to offer the Spanish department faculty time to weigh in on this project.

Then, today, late news, from the You Can't Make This Up Department, which is down the hall from the Spanish department. At his press conference, Tan Nguyen blamed the "hysteria" over the letter on, yes (Si), wait, here it comes…a bad translation! In the original English draft of the letter, he said, the word "immigrant" (translated to emigrado or immigrante—the jury is still out) wasn't used—instead the phrase "just a resident with a green card" was. So, it was the translator's fault—not his. And no, he wouldn't be dropping out of the race. Why should he?

Why indeed? (Any teacher can tell you—K-12, college or university, that is one lame excuse.)

But, let's do a closer read, shall we?

Mr. Tan neglected the more problematic part of the letter, which threatened the recipients with this Borgesian fabrication:

At the same time, you are advised that the government of the United States is installing a new computer system to verify the names of all new registered voters that vote in the October and November elections. Anti-immigration organizations can ask for information from this new computer system.

And what about that "October" election reference? Is that just sloppiness or what? Tee hee. How much did he pay his ghostwriter? His translator?

There were two more items, though a person could go on and on. Reb won't. For instance, that bevy of anti-immigrant group names that decorates the margins and letterhead. Hmmm.

Here's the crema on the flan. The letter is signed: Sincerely, Sergio Ramirez.

Rebel Girl was certain that she was one of the few Orange Countians who recognized this hearty effort at evoking an Everyhombre, using a nom de plume for a helpful if stern Mexican quasi-official, a name with authority and lots of hot vowels.

It was kind of shocking. Could it be, she wondered, THE Sergio Ramirez, a stalwart Sandinista revolutionary in Nicaragua back in the day, Vice President of the little country that roared at the US and then was undermined by the Reagan-Bush-Elliot Abrams even as the CIA mined its harbors? And wasn't my, our, Sergio Ramirez himself, ironically, a writer, in fact a novelist of some renown? Could this Ramirez have undergone the same kind of transformation as, say, Christopher Hitchens, turned from socialist land reform and education and national self-defense advocate (No pasaran!) into a nutty right-wing national chauvinist, all the while living here in Garden Grove or Santa Ana or Newport Beach and doing the cha-cha-cha with La Nutjob Suprema Senora Barbara Coe?

She knew the revolution had fallen on hard times but figured that Sergio, like his compadre Daniel Ortega, was busy retooling his image to fight another day. La lucha continua and all that.

So what could have brought Sergio Ramirez, the former vice president of revolutionary Nicaragua to the heart of OC?

Imagination is a lovely way to travel. And, of course, only the imagination of Tan Nguyen and his campaign advisors could have flown the former Second in Command of the revolutionary people's state to John Wayne Airport. Imagine how that brainstorming session might have gone:

All right guys, we need a Latino name. One that rings a bell, but not too many bells.

Jennifer Lopez? Nah. Eddie Olmos? No. Ricky Ricardo? Dead. Tomas Fuentes? Nope. Too fucking obvious.

A hand waves in the back of the room. I know, I know. How about Sergio Ramirez, the former Vice President of Nicaragua? That'll show those commies.

But my very favorite part of this letter is the closing paragraph, which reads so well, so true, so fine, now that the truth is out. Take another look and see for yourself:

Do not listen to any politician that tells you the opposite. They are only looking out for their own interests. They only want to win elections without any regard to what happens to you.

That's right. You tell 'em Tan.

Sergio Ramirez' Website