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For more than a decade, business schools around the country have been preaching about demographic and ethnographic changes in our country. Even as language translation professionals, we too must work hard at staying in tune with the changes of the modern world and how these changes relate to ethnographic changes. I admit that I wasn’t aware that there were difference in the terms Hispanic and Latino and this is a prime example of how business people need to become more aware of the ethnographic changes taking place. For those like me who aren’t in the know, the term Hispanic is actually slightly more inclusive than the alternative. What I find odd though is that a study of 10,000 people found that the respondents showed little favor over being classified as Hispanic or Latino. Despite the overall findings, a breakdown of the results found that that preferences actually were quite different based on where a respondent lived. To illustrate, people who answered the survey in CA and New England tended to like the term Latino. Respondents in Texas and the South preferred to be termed Hispanic. While no striking difference exists between the respondents overall, there were many respondents who would prefer to be termed Mexican, Cuban or be named by the country from which they came from.

It’s interesting to me, an enthusiast of art and society and a Kansas City Translation Services professional that the word Hispanic first came into existence more than one thousand years ago and has remained in use ever since. But while Hispanic has a long history, the term Latino seemed to emerge first during the Nixon or Carter administration in the 1970′s. Basically, the word Hispanic came into existence in the 1970′s by because the government wanted a word that sounded politically correct to refer to people from Mexico. Consequently, the Nixon Administration thought that it would be a good idea to include the term on long versions of population forms. But ten years later, it became standard government terminology when it was incorporated on all forms.

Most of my colleagues in Saint Louis Translation companies feel most comfortable using the term Hispanic in today’s business world in North America. The term to them simply conjures up images of international trade agreements and an expanding multilingual market that represents new opportunities. It should not bother anyone of us who has read the papers and knows that these activities would lead to mass migration changes. As these trends take hold, the term Hispanic has become a more inclusive, politically correct term to use in a corporate settings. While this has taken a while to make the point, all of us in our Houston office have taken a vote to use the term Hispanic as opposed to Latino is business settings and corporate meetings.

But regardless of the terminology that you use, demographic changes are moving across the American workplace. Need more encouragement? Well just consider that just 10 years ago the Federal Government had no idea that the Hispanic population would grow at a faster rate than the African American population. It was fascinating to read in 2002 U.S. Census that there were more Hispanics than blacks. Even more fascinating is that the United States had become the fastest-growing Spanish-speaking nation in the world. A Seattle Translation workers who I work with recalls a news report that reported, “Spanish speakers gave now exceeded the black population.”

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