By Shortly after President Trump took office last week Friday, whitehouse.gov/espanol went missing and was replaced instead by an error message explaining that “the page you’re looking for can’t be found.”
According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration regularly updated versions of the White House website in Spanish and a companion Twitter account (@LaCasaBlanca), sharing news of the president’s speeches, actions and information about health care reform, changes to immigration policy and other subjects. Former President George W. Bush’s administration also maintained a Spanish version of the official White House website.
Many Spanish-language news services noticed and reported the lack of a Spanish-translated web page last weekend, with no response from the Trump administration until Spokesman Sean Spicer responded on Monday. Although Spicer stated that the Spanish translation may return soon, he did not confirm an upcoming date or time.
Shortly after President Trump took office last week Friday, whitehouse.gov/espanol went missing and was replaced instead by an error message explaining that ‘the page you’re looking for can’t be found.’
“We hit the ground running on Day One,” he said, adding, “There was a lot of work to do, and we had done a lot of work on the website to make sure that we were prepared to get as much information up as fast as possible.” He explained on Monday during his first regularly scheduled press briefing, “We are continuing to build out the website both in the issue areas and in that area. But we’ve got the IT folks working overtime to continue to get all of that up to speed. Trust me, it’s going to take a little bit more time, but we’re working piece by piece to get that done.”
Some agencies still have a Spanish translation available, such as healthcare.gov. At the very least, translations are still available on some federal agencies, at least for the time being.
Many Spanish-language news services noticed and reported the lack of a Spanish-translated web page..
As of now, the whitehouse.gov/espanol has a homepage with the message “Thank you for your interest in this subject. Stay tuned as we continue to update whitehouse.gov” followed by a link to Obama’s archives.
America does not have an official language. Legal forms such as the written test for a driver’s license are available Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Bosnian, Chinese, as well as many others.
America has not required people to assimilate to English for legal purposes for years, so the expectation for Americans to assimilate to English in order to access the main source for understanding current national policies is unfair and irrational.