Supporting ESOL Families: Chinese & Khmer Language Access Coordinators Translate, Interpret, and
From left to right: Thavro Phim, Khmer Language Access Coordinator; Xuhong Wang, Chinese Language Access Coordinator; Samol Heng, Khmer Language Access Coordinator.
A typical situation in any multilingual Philadelphia public school:
School staff are preparing for an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with the student’s parents. It’s brought to the staff’s attention that the parents do not speak English fluently and will require a translated document. So, the school staff submit a Translation Request Form, asking for the 30-page IEP document to be translated by the time of the IEP meeting—which is the next day.
Come the time of the meeting, the translated IEP document is printed and ready for the parents, making the meeting successful for both staff and parents.
What happened between the translation request and the delivery of the document?
What happened behind the scenes?
Meet the District’s Translation and Interpretation team: a group of six hardworking individuals who coordinate the translation of all documents in the School District of Philadelphia.
Led by Director Cong Wang (Chinese speaker), the Translation and Interpretation team includes two Spanish Language Access Coordinators, two Khmer (Cambodian) Language Access Coordinators, and one Chinese Language Access Coordinator in addition to Mr. Wang. For translation requests in languages other than Chinese, Spanish, and Khmer, the Translation and Interpretation team coordinates with contractors to ensure the documents are translated in a timely manner.
Samol Heng, one of the Khmer Language Access Coordinators, started off as a District contractor himself in 2007, after having worked professionally as a translator and interpreter for several years. “At the time, the Khmer software in the computers at the District did not work…like the keyboard was all over the place,” Mr. Heng mused. “I know many people came to take the test, and they did not know how to manipulate the keyboard…they couldn’t even type!” Luckily, Mr. Heng had over a decade of experience working with such software.
Xuhong Wang, the Chinese Language Access Coordinator, started working in the District at General George A. McCall School in 2010, at which time McCall had 60% Chinese speakers. Ms. Wang supported the school’s bilingual program, helping to tutor students and observe classrooms. Ms. Wang joined the Translation and Interpretation team in its infancy, right when the District was pulling the team together.
Like Ms. Wang, Thavro Phim started working in the District at the school level. Mr. Phim was a Bilingual Counseling Assistant (Khmer) for eight years before joining the Translation and Interpretation team.
“I was a little hesitant,” he admitted. “I understand the nature of the work is so different. When you come here, you don’t have much interaction with the community, you work indirectly with the families. Even though all the work you do here is important…you don’t really have the direct interaction on the daily basis.”
Before entering the District and living in Philadelphia, Mr. Phim co-published a book on Cambodian performance art at Cornell University and supported Yale University’s effort to expose the genocide that occurred in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. In both of these positions, Mr. Phim translated documents from Khmer to English, and visa versa.
Ms. Wang, who was part of the Translation and Interpretation team from its inception, believes that the team’s techniques for distributing documents has improved greatly, especially in recent years. Ultimately, the team would like to have one person in each school designated as the “point person” for translation and interpretation needs and issues.
“They should be aware of the resources,” Ms. Wang said. “There are increasing demands for the services of this office.” Still, she said, many schools—even her own son’s school—are not aware of the work of the Translation and Interpretation Center.
Mr. Phim agreed. “Many times after we translate and send a document, we get calls from the school saying, ‘Where is the document?’” he explained. “And we say, ‘We’ve done it already!’”
Under the leadership of Cong Wang, the Translation and Interpretation Center has moved toward storing and managing all translation documents online (www.philasd.org/translation) so that any staff throughout the District, as well as families and students, can access such documents. “I think more and more, a good number of people compared to the past know about it,” Mr. Phim said. “But still, based on the number of schools and staff in the school district, I still think that there should be more people familiar with our work and what is available on the website.”
“I understand the level of work of the teachers and school staff,” Mr. Phim continued. “I know that they have a lot of things to do, but I would say this though: even though the School District recognizes that language service is important…people just think about the legal part. They don’t think about the real need, you know?”
While schools are certainly utilizing the services of the Translation and Interpretation Center by requesting that important documents be translated, in many cases, the requests are made simply because of legal reasons (such providing an IEP document in a language the parent can understand).
“I think the level of recognition of the need is still low,” Mr. Phim said. “Whatever they do is just procedure…If everyone from their heart realized that parents really need this—that the documents are really valuable to the student, or to the parent that they deal with—they’d probably utilize this resource much more than this.”
The Language Access Coordinators also know that many schools do work hard to provide translated documents for situations that go beyond simple legal obligation. They would like to see more schools utilize the resources that they provide, especially because documents that come out of the Translation and Interpretation Center can be trusted, whereas sources from other websites—such as Google Translate—are often riddled with mistakes and even wrong information.
Ms. Wang has seen such poorly translated documents being handed out to parents at schools. “When I see the documents, mistakes are there,” she said. “Accommodation—like, ‘the accommodation parents need through interpretation’—that was translated as ‘boarding,’ or ‘a place to live in.’”
“We take the quality very seriously,” Mr. Phim added. “When we saw what other people have done, we always found some mistake in there, or misunderstanding of the term.”
The Translation and Interpretation team is sensitive to translation quality, which is why they include a footnote at the end of each document they produce specifying that it was created by their team. If there’s a mistake in the document, the Translation and Interpretation team wants to take full responsibility for it. “We take pride in our work,” Mr. Phim said simply.
In order to ensure superior work products, there are two Language Access Coordinators for each in-house language: Coordinators hold one another accountable for producing top-quality work. For instance, if Mr. Phim translates a document, he will send it to Mr. Heng (who also speaks Khmer) to proofread before putting it on the website.
Besides translating district-wide documents such as letters from the superintendent, information about school enrollment, and the parent survey—just to name a few—the Translation and Interpretation team receives many requests to translate school-specific documents for IEP meetings, parent workshops, and Title I parent involvement meetings.
“Some times are more busy than others,” Mr. Heng commented. “Like when there’s parent involvement that the school has to do each year—Title I—those things come with like five, six-page documents from all different schools. That’s a lot of work.”
Ms. Wang agreed. “They all need it by the end of October,” she laughed.
On top of translating documents from District offices and schools, the Translation and Interpretation team maintains District websites in ten languages. “All of us here are multi-taskers,” Mr. Phim noted. “We do many different things every day, on top of our main responsibility, which is translation.”
Mr. Heng agreed, saying he often fields calls from schools and offices about how to find translated documents and how to request translation of a new document. Similarly, Mr. Phim is responsible for handling administrative tasks in addition to his primary role as a Language Access Coordinator. He works closely with the team’s director to coordinate contracts with external translators.
“To be honest with you, that’s why we have two screens,” he laughed. “We have two or three jobs open at the same time.”
From left to right: Thavro Phim, Khmer Language Access Coordinator; Nicole Marcote, Spanish Language Access Coordinator; Daniela Romero, Spanish Language Access Coordinator; Xuhong Wang, Chinese Language Access Coordinator; Samol Heng, Khmer Language Access Coordinator.
In addition to the grueling work of translating, proofreading, and editing innumerable documents, the Translation and Interpretation Center goes out into the field. All Language Access Coordinators take time to visit schools during report card conferences so they can help interpret and show parents and staff the Translation and Interpretation Center’s website.
While the Language Access Coordinators are masters at multi-tasking, the constant slew of translation and interpretation requests—especially from individuals who do not understand the time it takes to translate a document—is taxing on the six-person team.
“We work for every school, for every office,” Mr. Phim said. “We sit in the FACE Office, but our work is for everyone.”
The Translation and Interpretation team has even stayed in the office late at night or come in on weekends to complete translation requests by deadline. They understand the importance of providing documents in the parent’s language—and as overwhelming as their work is, the Coordinators know that they’re not reaching all families because of the way the District collects data on language and ethnicity.
For instance, Mr. Phim noted that the District only collects data on multilingual students through ESOL class enrollment, and in terms of data on ethnicity, immigrants are grouped into broad categories such as “Asian” and “Hispanic.”
To the Translation and Interpretation team, this is problematic because it allows certain sub-groups who may be struggling go unnoticed. Mr. Phim pointed to Cambodian students, who for many years have had low high school graduation rates—something Mr. Phim is aware of because of his close ties with the Cambodian community in Philadelphia. However, the District categorizes these students simply as “Asian”—it doesn’t sub-categorize to determine which Asian country the student may be from—meaning that Asian students are seen as having above average test scores and graduation rates even if the Asian immigrant subgroups are not meeting these standards.
“They see a lot of ‘Asian’ progress, kind of like above other ethnic groups or minority groups,” Mr. Phim said, “but if you look closely among the Asians, Cambodian is the most troubled. We tried so many times in the District to record in the database correctly: how many Chinese, how many Vietnamese, how many Cambodian,” but such data is not collected beyond ESOL enrollment.
“But who to push?” Mr. Phim continued. “I am just a little person who no one cares about…but as a person of the community, I see that as really critical.” Data connects to budget—if it appears that there is no need for additional support for “Asian” students or that Cambodian student enrollment in ESOL classes in declining, students who in reality still need those added language supports will not receive them.
So what can schools and District offices do to make the Translation and Interpretation team’s life a little bit easier?
“When submitting the request [for translation], I would prefer not saying that you need the document ‘as soon as possible,’” Ms. Wang said. “I would prefer a definite date.”
Mr. Phim emphasized that quality translation takes time. “A lot of people forget—when you write a letter [in your native language], you also need time,” he said. “So when you translate, it’s the same way. Translation is not just word-by-word—you have to understand the English original document and make it articulate and well-written in another language. So that takes time.”
“That’s what people should understand,” Mr. Phim continued, “that translation is not as simple as they thought.”
“And also Google Translate doesn’t work!” Ms. Wang chimed in.
In terms of interpretation, all Coordinators agreed that the English speaker needs to slow down and be mindful of how many sentences they’re saying before requesting interpretation. “We have no control over how fast they go,” Mr. Heng said. “We try our best.”
Ms. Wang agreed. “If they can finish one thought,” she explained, “then I can manage to relay the message more exactly.” Otherwise, the interpreter can only provide an approximate rendering of what the speaker said.
“I think the School District in general should realize that our whole District—we are so diverse,” Mr. Phim said. “You should consider that. If you know there’s a Cambodian kid, or a Chinese kid, or a Spanish kid in the school, don’t assume that the parent will come knowing English.”
“We need more understanding, to be honest with you,” Mr. Phim said in conclusion.
