The “monolingual folks” weren’t feeling the love – (car salesman run Spanish commercials with English subtitles and hears about it)

“But the point here is, all Stewart wanted to do was sell Toyotas. It’s something he’s been doing for 33 years as the proprietor of Earl Stewart Toyota in Palm Beach County, Fla. Then he hit upon an idea he thought might expand his market: Spanish-language commercials with English subtitles. The spots run on English-language television and, though he speaks no Spanish, Stewart stars in them himself.

The subtitles, he says, were an afterthought. “I said, ‘You know, I’m going to be talking to a lot of people that don’t speak Spanish so as a courtesy or to explain what I’m doing, maybe I should use English subtitles.’ It was really an effort on my part, albeit a failure, to be nice to the monolingual folks.”

The “monolingual folks” were not feeling the love, putting it mildly. Stewart says the commercial brought him a “flood” of angry, often profane e-mails and phone calls, nine out of every 10 sharply critical of his commercial. As described by Stewart, the complaints tended to be longer on emotion than on logic.”*

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