Last night, a reader was looking over the recent SEC press release regarding the agency's new charges against Alcatel-Lucent for alleged FCPA violations and emailed me with an observation. In the release, the SEC had actually included links to both Spanish and French translations of the release, as well. Was this new, he wondered? As I was responding that I'd never noticed such translations before, he emailed again with the news that he'd just discovered an entire page on the SEC website translating every press release back to August 2009 into Spanish.

We agreed this raises several questions:

Why just Spanish translations (other than the one French translation in the Alcatel-Lucent case)?

Are these English-to-Spanish translations mandatory under some statute or rule somewhere? If not, are they worth the manpower required to create them in the current dire budget situation that has forced the SEC to cut back on enforcement and inspection activities?

Is there a demand for Spanish-language SEC press releases? What is the over-under on the average number of page views one of these translated releases receives? 20? 50? 100?

Just asking!!