233 shares share tweet sms send email By: | January 13, 2016 11:05 am Hey, here’s something interesting: clubs have received memo telling them they need to have full-time Latin translators for 2016. Joint effort between MLB and union. — Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) Plenty of Latin American-born MLB players learn English, either well enough to become fluent or at least well enough to spout baseball cliches after games. But as , there has been something of a double standard in the league in recent years: How teams have dealt with such issues in the past has varied from club to club, and has been dependent on which language needed interpreting. This move is designed, in part, to bring uniformity and peace of mind, and to ensure that native Spanish speakers have a chance to express themselves more completely in the media…. What MLB hadn’t ever addressed, until now: Why have the two groups of players — Asians and Latinos — been given different expectations? It has been a common accommodationfor teams to give Asian players an English interpreter to those who request one. With the Latino players, it’s been more of an afterthought, begrudgingly and sometimes half-heartedly afforded. What MLB appears to be doing by requiring Spanish interpreters is erasing the distinction. Plenty of fans will say that athletes paid big money to come live and work in the United States should learn English, even if the United States does not actually have an official language and naming one would be antithetical to the what the country is supposed to be all about. And the truth is, learning a second language as an adult is extremely difficult, and ballplayers from the Dominican Republic and Cuba and Venezuela are paid for their ability to hit home runs and snare line drives and throw 95-mph fastballs — all of which are also really, really hard to do — and if guys were taking too much time away from making themselves better at baseball to learn English, people would complain about that, too.Translator Eugene Koo, left, translates for Korean-born Cardinals pitcher Seung Hwan Oh. (J.B. Forbes/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP) Relying on amateur Spanish-to-English interpreters, a common practice in big-league clubhouses, puts basically everyone involved in a difficult position. Players can’t be certain their words are being accurately translated, translators — often a bilingual teammate or coach — are called on to do extra work they’re not compensated or trained to do, and English-only media members must hope their questions and the answers to them are being appropriately communicated. In other words: It’s about time. It’s 2016, and roughly a quarter of Major League Baseball players come from countries that don’t commonly speak English. Children everywhere dream of someday playing big-league baseball, but few fantasize about squaring off with a dozen schlubby reporters (myself often included) rattling off questions in a foreign language after the game. None of this will likelystop the players who want to learn English from learning English, as bilingualism is an enormously valuable skill in baseball and life, and plenty of ballplayers are smart dudes who want to enrich themselves and better socialize with all their teammates. But developing fluency in a second language, especially if you come from someplace with relatively low literacy rates in your native tongue, is no small task, and it seems obvious that guys getting seven- and eight-figure salaries should be made to feel comfortable communicating in their workplaces. , , , , , 233 shares share tweet sms send email