Lacking in Languages

There was an article that I read last week in the free paper Metro that stated that the safety advertisements and the subway evacuations posted on trains and in the subway were not translated in enough languages for the diverse number of riders.

Currently, many of the advertisements are in Spanish and English, but the argument made by Assemblymen Peter Rivera is that other ads disregard the fact that other languages are spoken and that a number of people speak them.

According to John Choe, chief of staff for City Councilman John Liu, the MTA machines are also lacking a sufficient amount of language translations. The piece talks about certain areas being heavily populated with an ethnic group but the stations tied to those areas do not reflect the diversity of the community in the advertisements and/or safety guidelines.

The MTA spokeswoman, Mercedes Padilla said that the MTA has made efforts in communicating with riders by translating information in several languages and that the vending machines reflect this as well. But more can always be done.

I, for one, as a subway rider can attest to seeing many ads in Spanish and English but rarely see ads in Chinese or any other language. Granted we can't have translations in all languages, but we can address the segments of the population that have a significant presence in the city. New York City is much too diverse too think in such narrow terms.