Supporting ESOL Families: Spanish Language Access Coordinators Translate, Interpret, and Build a Cul
Nicole Marcote, left, and Daniela Romero, right, are both Spanish Language Access Coordinators in the Office of Family and Community Engagement.
“Language is a major part of who you are,” says Daniela Romero, one of the Spanish Language Access Coordinators in the Translation and Interpretation department of the FACE Office. “When you cannot speak your language because people won’t understand you, it makes you feel scared, and it makes you feel stupid. There’s something underneath that moves and makes you feel very unsettled.”
Ms. Romero works very closely with Nicole Marcote, another Spanish Language Access Coordinator in the FACE Office. They both emphasize the need to change for native English speakers to change their attitude toward people who do not speak English, no matter where they come from, and no matter what language they speak.
“Everybody can have basic communication, no matter the language. It’s the attitude that has to change,” Ms. Marcote says. “There is a monolingual perspective and it’s very closed-minded. It’s very hard sometimes for monolingual people to put themselves in the position of somebody who is just not understanding what you’re saying. It’s almost unimaginable.”
“It would help monolingual people to have an idea of what it’s like to be in a situation where they don’t understand a single word,” Ms. Romero suggests.
Let’s try to imagine: You live in a country that is not your own. People speak a language you do not understand. Your children attend a public school where they often send automated phone messages to all parents. You receive a call in this language you do not understand, but you understand one word—school.
“You get this call and you just hear school,” Ms. Marcote says. “Do you have to pick your child up from school now? Did something bad happen? Is there a school emergency? Do I have to be at the school for a meeting right now?”
How would you feel? Panicked? Scared?
“It creates this anxiety in parents.” Ms. Marcote explains.
The challenges that ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) and non-English-speaking families face are what Ms. Marcote and Ms. Romero work to combat every day. About 70 percent of their days are focused on translations—which refers to written language. Interpretation refers to spoken language.
The two Spanish Language Access Coordinators translate policies, flyers, calendars, posters, and many more written materials from English to Spanish to provide families with necessary District information.
Thirty percent of the time, the Language Access Coordinators work with spoken language as interpreters. Often called upon to perform simultaneous interpretation—meaning interpreting on the spot as another person is speaking—Ms. Romero and Ms. Marcote interpret workshops, presentations, parent-teacher conferences, or even simple conversations and requests for help as people stop by the Parent and Family Resource Center. “When we do simultaneous interpretations, at the most, other people should only ever hear murmurings,” Ms. Romero explains.
The Language Access Coordinators also facilitate workshops for the DIstrict community that can benefit people of all languages. They facilitate workshops for staff on cultural literacy and working with families and students who speak languages other than English, workshops for parents in Spanish on District policies, and workshops for communities on the professional code of conduct for interpreters.
“Some parents come in here so often that we’ve established relationships with them. And we help them with pretty much everything,” Ms. Romero says. Ms. Marcote chimes in and explains, “We talk to parents. We get to indirectly learn about the common issues that ESOL students are having at school. Through these conferences, we get insight into the people who we’re supposed to be helping with these translations.”
Although they often build close relationships with the parents for whom they interpret, the Language Access Coordinators’ work is serious and follows professional standards like any other job. And like any other profession, being an effective translator/interpreter takes years of training and experience.
“It’s important to keep professionalism when we’re doing our jobs,” Ms. Marcote says. Ms. Romero continues, “People tend to think that if you’re bilingual, you can translate, interpret, or teach, but that’s not the case. Our brains are working with two different languages. You have to train. There are certain skills that you have to learn.”
“Just because you’re bilingual, doesn’t mean you can be an effective translator,” Ms. Marcote emphasizes. “It is a profession.”
The paths that Ms. Marcote and Ms. Romero have taken to get to where they are today are certainly filled with language, service, and cultural literacy. After arriving in the U.S. in 1997 from Spain and completing her education, Ms. Marcote worked in New York City for five years at a newspaper syndicate. Her main role was to translate comic strips like Dilbert, Peanuts, and For Better For Worse, which remain, in her opinion, the most difficult translation jobs she’s ever had to do (aside from some complex District policies).
Translating humor is so challenging because, as Ms. Marcote explains, “if you were to translate it literally, it would just fall flat. You have to work with wordplay.”
After her children began attending Southwark Elementary so they could participate in Spanish immersion programs, Ms. Marcote wanted to stay involved in her children’s education, so she applied for the Language Access Coordinator position in the FACE Office, and she has been working in Translation and Interpretation since April of 2016.
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.
Ms. Romero arrived in the U.S. from Chile in 2000. With a background in teaching English to Spanish-speakers, she started teaching Spanish to American English-speakers. In 2006, Ms. Romero began working for Nationalities Service Center (NCS) in their Education department. She worked to recruit and manage volunteers to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) to immigrants from all over the world.
Once she found the open position as a Language Access Coordinator in the Translation and Interpretation department within the FACE Office, Ms. Romero applied and now uses her experiences in language education, translation, and interpretation every day. She’s been in the Translation and Interpretation department for just over a year and a half.
When she began going out to different schools to facilitate workshop and provide interpretation services, Ms. Romero realized that, as she says, “the parents had a lot of this need to communicate with someone in their language. They feel very intimidated by the whole school system.”
As soon as Ms. Romero would present herself to the Spanish-speakers of the school communities, they would latch onto her and feel more comfortable asking her all the questions that they’ve had about the District for far too long. “By going to the schools and talking to them about very specific things,” Ms. Romero continues, “they would end up just telling us about every little thing that they had been holding inside of them. We’re giving parents a personal connection and making it clear that there is someone on the other end that is listening.”
“It’s a two-way street,” Ms. Marcote adds. “There has to be a stronger push for schools to understand what their parents need in their languages, and parents have to be empowered to start the dialogue with the schools. We should start going the other way, from parents to the schools, rather than from schools to the parents.”
The work that all Language Access Coordinators do in the Translation and Interpretation department is crucial to including all parents and family members throughout the District in the necessary conversations around student success. Their upcoming work includes implementing an online communication platform in which parents and family members can communicate with teachers and school staff by filling out an online form in their own language that would include all the topics that families might need to talk to the teachers and principals about, from attendance to homework to bullying.
Along with their day-to-day operations and developing this new project, the Translation and Interpretation department continues to challenge monolingual attitudes toward ESOL families.
“From the perspective of a monolingual person, because you’ve been here all your life, you don’t imagine your life in a different language.” Ms. Romero says. “It’s not just the language per se, it’s everything that surrounds the language, it's your identity.”
The compromises that ESOL families have to make in terms of their language, cultural identities, and senses of self can be alleviated through monolingual English-speakers’ understanding and open communication.
“Sometimes it does more harm than good when we insist on using a language that many families don’t understand,” Ms. Marcote explains. American society cannot continue insisting that people learn English, which Ms. Romero explains is a challenge in and of itself.
“Learning a language takes a while,” she says. “It takes a while especially when you have to do so many things. You have to provide for your kids. You might be a single parent. You might have to work two jobs. There’s just not enough time to go to a class.” Taking advantage of the necessary and effective services that Translation and Interpretation provides is the first step in opening the District’s school communities to ESOL families and students.
