On another board I visit someone was talking about being at Home Depot today where an Hispanic man was throwing a fit because he couldn’t read the Spanish instructions on the product because they were written in white print on a green background. The English instructions on the product were written in black on a white background, and he was mad because the Spanish instructions were not printed that was as well.
Someone on the board suggested he should not be complaining because the Spanish instructions were on the product, after all this is the US.
Another person chimed in with this:
“as part of NAFTA all products should have Spanish, English and French on goods sold in the US, Mexico and Canada.”
My question is about the above statement. Is this a fact, and does that mean any product we buy must have all languages? Doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t think that’s accurate; products have to have French and English on them in Canada, and I would say they almost universally do (I can’t remember the last time I saw a product here with only English on it), but the Spanish is sometimes on, mostly not.
The only time I see Spanish on products up here is when it is accompanied by several other languages (I assume for the European market). French is required, but that long predates NAFTA.
Here in the US, I see some products with English/French (I live near the US/Quebec border), English/Spanish (there are a lot of Hispanic immigrants in the area), but mostly English only. As far as I can see, NAFTA just means things are easy to sell cross-border. Living near Quebec, companies can label things by both US & Canada regulations, and distribute to both countries in this area from the same stock, easily. The Spanish labeled ones are just because in this area there’s a demand for it, so the Spanish labeled ones sell better than English only. The rest are because only US regs are required if you are not selling that particular packaging in more than one country. So apparently, NAFTA just makes it easy for a near-border distributor to serve 2 of the countries from a single distribution warehouse, without having to have 2 separate stocks, as long as the 1 stock he has is labeled for both countries regs. Just my guess, though, because I’m not in any business where I have to know the actual regs.
Here in the San Antonio area (2 hrs north of the US/Mexico), many products have instructions, ingredients, etc. written in both English and Spanish. It’s what the market demands; I’d estimate that about half the population is at least 1/8 Hispanic.
To sell (commercially) a product in Quebec, it must have a French label. Maybe to sell a product in Mexico it has to have a Spanish label, but that is up to the Mexican government to enforce if they wish. When I was in NYC yesterday, I saw a label in French and English, but not Spanish, which sort of surprised me. But none of this has anything to do with NAFTA.
But the OP reminded me of one of my pet peeves. For the benefit of tourists, the Montreal authorities have posted instructions for their very successful rental bikes (Bixi bikes) in French and English. But the French is white letters on black, while the English is an illegible dark gray on white gray (or vice versa, I forget). To make it worse, they are about 4 feet from the ground, which makes it impossible to read if you wear bifocals.
NAFTA doesn’t contain any mandate for including Spanish or French on U.S. labels.
The FTC, FDA, and other U.S. agencies have established standards that allow products to include other languages (that is, they may, but need not, include other languages) on product labels.
However, NAFTA does call for harmonized labeling, so the way certain textile compositions, garment care instructions, food content labels, etc. appear has changed “because of” NAFTA.