Over the last few weeks, we’ve posted several entries about mainstream language issues. Some of these started on the front page of American newspapers. Then they followed  the usual route of the 24-hour news cycle, disappearing ever deeper in the paper as election, economic, weather, and sports news dominate the headlines.

• Women’s golf hooks a drive into a sand trap. Last month, the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA) announced that it would demand that its South Korean players demonstrate English language proficiency. Maybe the real problem was that the Korean golfers are getting too good? In a July 2007 article entitled “Why Korean golfers are dominating LPGA Tour,” World of Golf staff writer Jennifer Mario wrote that “the last names on the leaderboard read like a Pusan phonebook: Bae, Jang, Kim, Lee, Pak, Park, Park, Shin.” We suggested interpreters to help with interviews. After a storm of protest, the LPGA backed down from its Anglo-centric demands.
• Limited Spanish proficiency finds its way to Congress. In an open letter to his community, Congressman Charles B. Rangel thanked everyone who had been so supportive of him during his recent tax travails. His letter, which we received apparently as a result of our offer to provide him with some advice on interpreters, wisely avoided repeating the claim that failure to understand Spanish caused his problems. One of our suggestions had been to call the New York Mets’ general manager, Omar Minaya, for some interpreting help. The Mets’ cross-town rival New York Yankees could have assisted, too. Anxious to maximize income from the sale of memorabilia from legendary Yankee Stadium, the team’s managers issued a memo to players in both English and Spanish telling them “hands off!“– if any of the Yankees want souvenirs, they’ll have to pay for them like everybody else.
• Interpreters speak out about their work. When the Federales arrested 400 undocumented workers in the country’s largest-ever immigration raid on a meatpacking plant in Iowa, interpreter Erik Camayd-Freixas detailed his views regarding the situation. In response, we commented on the responsibilities of intepreters. Also in recent headlines, a Pashto interpreter who worked for attorneys at the Guantánamo detention center published an autobiographical account of her experiences, and an interpreter from Darfur chronicled his work helping Western reporters overcome barriers of language, and more.
• The Olympics postpone a food crisis. Just before the Shanghai Olympics, we wrote that China deserved a gold medal for its language planning to deal with hordes of sport tourists. From all indications, authorities were also successful in suppressing news about adulterated baby food, echoing last year’s problems. On a less somber note, McDonald’s has been promoting its “southern style” chicken sandwich with transliterated Greek (see photo “new”), an odd nod to its Olympic sponsorship. By the way, think Athens, Georgia for the southern-style recipe, not Kalamata, Greece.

Speaking of news updates, American papers continue to turn inward, if any more domestic navel gazing is at all possible. According to a Pew Research Center report, “nearly two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs.” If history can serve as a guide, most readers won’t complain until sports coverage, the comics page, and the crossword puzzles are cut.