Talk:Tan D. Nguyen

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[edit] Translation of letter

I can't find a decent or complete translation of the Spanish-language letter from a media source. Is it considered original research if a Wikipedia editor with Spanish language competency provides a translation directly? Emcee 19:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

You can find a translation from the Orange County Register: [1]. DHN 01:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV

Man alive! Most religion articles don't have this much POV. Going to do some cleanup, barring objections.

Anti-Nguyen POV

• The man ran twice, and this makes him a perennial candidate? Granted, he's got some of the trappings of someone who might go on to earn this designation, but as of now it's just a baldfaced insult.

Pro-Nguyen POV

• First, the easy part: Prosecutors do not "clear" people of charges. They decide not to prosecute. And even when someone can correctly said to have been "cleared" by the legal process in one way or another, this does not constitute a determination that "no crime was committed." That's why it's never reported as such.

• Unsourced commentary sentence "the published translation also does not make sense in the context of the rest of the letter." It's got to go. But actually the whole paragraph is less a matter of POV than just plain sloppiness, I think.

For clarity's sake, here's my assessment (not saying this should go in the article). Any serious attempt to defend the letter itself, such that they've been made, are sure to have been along these lines: The letter does, strictly speaking, instruct "immigrants" as well as illegals that they have no right to vote and are likely to be imprisoned or deported for their crime. This was perhaps inadvertantly sloppy, since few would deny that naturalized Americans are correctly called "immigrants." But the context (as the present article is awkwardly trying to explain) does both before and after that sentence affirm the right of citizens to vote, suggesting that "immigrant" is clearly to be contrasted with "citizen." And after all, any immigrant who'd really been naturalized would be quite unlikely to be confused. They might still speak with a Spanish accent, but by this point they'd hardly be "huddled masses" and would actually be savvier than they're being given credit for--they'd have had to attend classes and pass exams on becoming an American; and being told they were about to gain the right to vote would hardly have been an obscure detail during that process. (I'm not saying I buy this defense of the letter, but that's what it would be.)

Nobody in his right mind, on the other hand, would defend the letter by questioning the translation. That, as I've explained, isn't the issue. In fact, the original Spanish reads "emigrante," rather than "inmigrante," so the more accurate translation actually undercuts if anything the above defense of the letter. I might buy that "immigrants" might be loosely used to refer to noncitizens; but to say that that "emigrant," which refers to what one did in the old country, could be sensitive to that distinction is just an absurd stretch.

But at long last: All this long-winded explanation is moot anyway, at least for the time being. The whole discussion of this controversy needs to go, because there is in fact nothing in any of the sources to suggest that Nguyen or his office did anything to defend the letter in this or any other manner. To the contrary, there's everywhere only the report that they vigorously disowned it. This is actually a candidate for a speed delete, because it puts the user's argument into Nguyen's mouth (the pro-Nguyen user ends up being the most unfair to Nguyen of all!). But I'll be a nice guy and wait a little while.205.212.72.240 11:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Oops! Spoke too soon about some of this. But that was because the citations didn't properly correspond. And some of it was wrong anyway! So I fixed it up a little. I think it works.67.85.178.110 08:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)