Ahora, Chrysler Folletos Impreso En Espaol
September 14th, 2012 11:55 AM
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News that Chrysler will be offering their brochures in Spanish as well as English piqued my curiosity. In Canada, auto makers have English and French brochures due to our official language policy. But is the practice of offering brochures in Spanish a common one in America?
I’d assume that doing so might be a way to reach out to a significant demographic, but since it’s not an official language like French is up here, it’s a different story.
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That's actually a pretty good idea, especially for regions that have a large population of Spanish speaking citizens. Good on Chrysler for trying to tap/re-tap into that market.
I work for a home building company in the southwest. We're required to post HUD and equal opportunity signs in Spanish, but we don't find it necessary to translate our brochures into Spanish. Most Latin families have English speakers in the younger generations (eg: abuela speaks only Spanish, mom and dad understand spoken English and speak enough to get by, and the kids are fully fluent). We have tossed around translating our brochures and sales forms into Cantonese. Chinese buyers are less likely to have a family translator and can depend too much on their outside broker.
Just to clarify, Brochures in Canada are available in French not so much because it's an official language, but more so because its the language of abt 20% of canadians and abt 80% of Québécois. In fact you'd be hard press to sell a car in Québec without a french brochure. The dealership where I used to work didn't even stock english brochure.
Here in Houston it would be difficult to get a job selling cars without knowing Spanish . One problem is that what the , frankly , lower class origin Hispanics is speaking is not Spanish at all and words listed in a Spanish / English dictionary are neither used nor understood by the undocumented types . And the Spanglish spoken varies depending on what area of Mexico , Central America , etc . they are from . Another time I worked one nite for an extremely wealthy family from Spain and the Spanish they spoke was classical Castillian Spanish that I could actually understand . And yeah some car dealerships here advertise also for Cantonese speaking salesmen .