'White House will have Spanish-language website'

The White House website will have a Spanish-language version, since the government understands "the importance and the interest" that exists for having information in that language, a top official said.

The Spanish version of the White House webpage does not exist, at present, because it is adding "a lot of content in English" and "expanding the team" tasked with communications, "but it's coming along", presidential adviser Helen Aguirre Ferre said on Wednesday in an interview with Efe news.

"I think that the previous administration (of former President Barack Obama) took eight or nine months to be able to launch it. I hope that ... we can do so more quickly," Aguirre Ferre, who is also director of media affairs, said.

But "certainly we want to do it well. I think that that is the most important part".

The webpage version in Spanish, spoken by more than 50 million people in the US and 700 million worldwide, was launched by the Obama administration but disappeared from the White House website shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20.

The disappearance received much criticism from a broad range of Hispanic sectors in the US and even from Spanish authorities and top officials at Madrid's Academia de la Lengua, the institution responsible for overseeing the Spanish language in Spain.

Aguirre Ferre said that the White House Spanish-language Twitter account has been in operation for more than a month and is also going to be further "developed" and "provide more content".

"We ... understand the importance and the interest there is in communicating in Spanish," a language that is spoken by "a huge number of people interested" in what the Trump administration is doing both at home and abroad, the adviser added.

--IANS

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