As part of my consulting job, I often provide technical translations from English into Spanish. I frequently open the original text in my computer and I do the translation using that original file.
As a result, the automatic spelling and grammar checker of my word processing program gets “confused” about which language it should use and, therefore, about what corrections it should make. For that reason, the spelling checker often corrects what I write, assuming it is wrong if when it is correct.
For example, when I write in Spanish, the spelling checker deletes the accent in the word “reunión” and also deletes the question mark at the beginning of a sentence (“¿”), or adds unneeded capital letters in words such as “nuevo.”
I am forced then to rewrite words and sentences that were properly written the first time, because the spelling checker, doing its automatic job without any contextualization, automatically assumes I am wrong.
This is just a trivial example, but it led me to ask myself how many more things are being automatically corrected in my life because somebody assumes that, because of my language or my culture, what I do or say is wrong and it should be immediately corrected.
I can provide a long list of non-trivial examples of unnecessary corrections.
For example, we Hispanics pay more for health insurance, life insurance, and even car insurance than non-Hispanics, and we pay even more if we live in a neighborhood with a high percentage of Hispanics. We pay more for the same reason my spelling checker corrects what I write: a computer program says there is something wrong with us.
According to the Office of Minority Health of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Hispanics, due to cultural and linguistic “barriers,” have less access to health care and suffer more chronic diseases than other groups.
The problem is that we are being compared in our weight, height, and health to the ideal weight, height, and health of a 25-year old white person. That’s the criteria to decide if we are healthy or not. That’s why we are always thought to be “sick” and we have to pay more for insurance.
This situation is similar to what would happen if the spelling checker of my word processing program decides to complain that it has to correct me “all the time” (even if what I write is right) and, therefore, the program maker assumes I am “at risk” of using the spelling checker more often, charging me more for that service.
There are many more examples of “automatic corrections” beyond spelling checkers and insurance payments. For example, many of our young Latino students are “corrected” by teachers when they say they want to go to college or when they share big dreams about themselves and the future of their community.
Perhaps it is time for us, as I do in my own word processing program, to change the language of life and start making our own corrections.