Feature
by Jeffery P. Woo
“Wisdom consists of the
anticipation of consequences.”
– Norman Cousins
On July 1, 2004, a newly revised law (Civil Code Section 1632) takes effect that requires the translation into Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese or Korean of certain types of contracts that are negotiated primarily in one of these languages. These contracts include all residential rent agreements with a duration of one month or longer.
Prior to this revision, the existing law required only the translation of contracts negotiated in Spanish. The original purpose of the law was laudable. It was designed to protect a monolingual Spanish-speaking consumer from an unscrupulous car dealer who would, in Spanish, purport to negotiate the purchase and financing of a car. Five years later, this same consumer would discover that what he or she had actually signed was a lease agreement, one that required not only the return of the car, but perhaps the payment of a residual amount for excess mileage. Clearly, there were abuses that the law rightfully sought to address. Now, the newly revised law adds Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Korean to the list of languages that require translation.
The revised law, as applied to automobile purchases, remains a useful and effective protection for consumers, because regardless of whether a consumer purchases a new or used car—for example a Toyota, Ford or Mercedes Benz—the paperwork remains the same (except the price, of course). Car dealers who appear to finance the purchase or lease of cars do not actually finance the transaction themselves. The car manufacturer, a bank or other financial institution provides the actual financing and, in turn, packages these loans for sale to the financial markets. As a consequence, the underwriting of such loans, as well as the financing documents, must be uniform. Due to this uniformity, the auto industry as a whole has no difficulty in preparing accurate translations of its documents into Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Korean. Furthermore, the monolingual-speaking community remains an important, competitive and profit-making segment of the market for car dealers, so they are anxious to comply.
The logic falls apart when landlords are called upon to apply this law to rental agreements. As an industry, landlords in California do not use one single rental-agreement form, and a universal form is not likely forthcoming. The PPMA lease, sold by SFAA, applies specifically for use in San Francisco and takes into account the specifics of our local rent ordinance. PPMA also has a lease drafted specifically for Oakland and its Just Cause Eviction Ordinance. I am aware of more than a dozen different lease forms that landlords can obtain online, from landlord-tenant books, or at stationary stores. In California, different lease forms are required in different localities.
As a result, landlords are unable as an industry group to produce accurate, reliable translations for each one of the various rental-agreement forms they need to use. You may ask yourself why PPMA does not produce an official translation of the PPMA lease for each language? Aside from the cost, the problem is that even if all landlords agreed to use the PPMA lease in San Francisco, the form often requires the addition of specific terms particular to your building. For instance, you may wish to add provisions regarding the use of the backyard or balconies, division of commonly metered utilities, use of garbage collection facilities, or appropriate time for tenants to wash their cars. These added provisions would also need to be translated.
If translated leases were available, what would happen later when there might be an argument about the accuracy of the translation? Even fair-minded tenant attorneys acknowledge that what we can expect from compliance with this law is a battle of expert translators in court.
As a practical matter, there will be no reasonable way for landlords to comply with the revised law. So what are landlords to do? Simple—don’t negotiate in any of the five foreign languages. If you are a landlord that has traditionally provided rental housing to one of these five monolingual speaking communities, you will be able to continue to advertise in the foreign language, but you must not discuss any of the terms, including rent amount, security deposit, or length of lease in that foreign language. It will not be enough for you to provide an interpreter either. Although the revised law permits a tenant to use his own interpreter, if a landlord provides the interpreter, the law will apply and a written translation will be required.
The unfortunate and unintended consequence of this law is to create further barriers to monolingual-speaking communities and their access to rental housing. Unlike the automobile industry, the costs for compliance are much too high for the average landlord to bear in order to make it worthwhile to compete for monolingual-speaking tenants through the use of their foreign language. Furthermore, there is no evidence that in the rental housing industry there are any abuses committed when lease negotiations occur in foreign languages. While there can be no doubt about the good intentions of this law, its effects will clearly have a negative impact on achieving the goal of providing equal access to rental housing.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. The information contained in this article is general in nature. Consult the advice of an attorney for any specific problem. Jeffery P. Woo is the principal of the real estate law firm of Woo & Associates, P.C. He may be contacted by email at woo@mypropertyrights.com or 415-705-6470. Copyright © 2004.