my job exists because of injustice

I thought I had talked a little bit about what I do on this blog, but when I did a word search, it turns out I've only mentioned it in passing, twice. So allow me to officially say that I work as a Spanish Medical Interpreter - even though I am often casually referred to as "the translator". It is a relatively young field, only about 25 years old, so although some people are familiar with interpreting in the context of the UN, and conference interpreting, a lot of people have never heard of medical interpreting. To break it all the way down, I work with medical staff, who call me in to help them communicate with patients who are 1) primarily Spanish-speaking, and 2) who's proficiency in English is somehow limited.

The patients I work with run the whole gamut: they may not know English at all, they may know only the words they need to get by in their job, or they may be almost fully fluent, but out of their depth in a medical setting. If you speak, or have attempted to learn another language, you can probably imagine why this is necessary. If you were talking to a doctor about a pain, some unexplained bleeding, a chronic illness, a procedure you've never heard of before, or something you're worried about in that second language, even if you consider yourself able to get by, you'd probably feel much more confident about the interaction if you had the option of speaking and being answered in English, too. That confidence is what I give to my patients, and to medical staff.

I once saw a South Asian woman, in full Sari, standing in the middle of a hall on a hospital ward in Georgia, looking so isoltaed. She was a pillar of color transplanted from another world into this tan-and-white washed-out place. As soon as someone handed her the phone, it was like her world snapped back into focus - she could tell the nurse what was going on with her family member in the other room. She could find out what medicine the nurse had given, and what the doctors' plan was for the day, and that the nurse wasn't ignoring them, but actually working on what needed to be done for discharge. There are horror stories of people being in the hospital without being able to talk to anyone or understand anyone, and so thinking they were in prison, or dying, or not knowing that they were dying, or unable to speak to anyone for 18 days. You never know how important talking is until you can't.

So as you can imagine, this work is deeply satisfying; to be able to be that conduit that allows someone to have full awareness of and ability to participate in what's going on around them. But it is also fascinatingly complex and full of anxious moments, times when you have to make a decision under pressure, on your own, that will have lasting consequences. If you could ask my friends, or acquaintances, they would tell you that I can easily go on for over an hour about the ins and outs of interpreting: the people and situations I encounter, and what it's like to be always negotiating the in-between. Not unlike most professions, I suppose, interpreting is a world unto itself.

One thing that's fascinating about being a Spanish Interpreter, in particular, in the medical field is that the patients I serve come from all different corners of the Americas: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Equitoreal Guinea. And occasionally Spain. Each of these people, to get to where they are both geographically and in life, have passed through so many different experiences and places that each one is completely different. Sure, there are some patterns, but there are so many patterns, that most days, it doesn't feel like it. I never know who I'm going to meet when I walk into an encounter - it might be a Cuban person from Miami, or a recently emigrated lawyer from Venezuela, or a migrant worker from Guatemala... the list is endless. This has a lot of different implications in terms of vocabulary I need to know, skills I need to employ, and background knowledge I need to have/acquire.

One thing that took me completely by surprise at first was meeting patients who spoke Spanish as their second language. My first experience of this was with a Mam speaker. I had never heard of the language before, and naturally asked why we hadn't just used the phone service to connect with a Mam speaker, rather than calling me, a Spanish interpreter in to do the job. What I learned that day opened my eyes to this fact:

My job exists because of Spain's participation in colonialism.

Think about it. Why do so many countries in South and Central America speak Spanish? Why does Mexico speak Spanish? Because of Spanish conquistadors. We recently had Columbus day, and my facebook feed was inundated with angry posts about how we should be celebrating indigenous peoples day. Well, that day when I met my first Mam speaker was when I first came into contact with someone who speaks a living, breathing, evolving, indigenous language.

Since then, I have met speakers of Mam, K'iche', Q'anjob'al, Akatek, Chuj, Zapotec, and Mixtec. Today I had the privilege of hearing Carmelina Cadenas, from Maya Interpreters LLC speak at a professional conference for medical interpreters. I learned that in Guatemala alone, there are 22 officially recognized indigenous languages; that many of these languages are actually more like 2, or 4 separate languages, and that though they are called "dialects," they often really aren't mutually intelligible - which in the field of linguistics could be used to argue that they are in fact distinct languages that belong to the same language family.

Indigenous languages are still spoken across all of the Americas. According to Wikipedia, South America and the Caribbean are home to 350 indigenous languages that are currently still spoken, but there were 1,500 at first European contact. Hearing Carmelina speak today, hearing her speak to us in Akatek, really made it hit home for me that all of the many wonderful people I serve would not speak Spanish but for colonialism. My job, as it is, would not exist but for colonialism. Not linguistically, not politically, not economically. The situations that my patients are fleeing from, the reasons for which they are emigrating, would be completely, 100% different, if they existed at all. My job exists because of injustice. And it's not something where I can look at it and say, "well, what I am doing is a tiny drop in the ocean of restitution that's required." There is no going back. Those horrors have been done. My patients speak Spanish, and many have since birth. Those other 1,150 languages are dead now, and will never need an interpreter.

I'm sorry, I just had to sit with that for a minute. I don't really know what to write after that.

I love my job precisely because it IS a drop in the bucket of justice that's needed. I love working and giving my patients the dignity and participation they deserve because they are human, and it's not their fault that they ended up where they are, or who they are, or when they are. Day after day of speaking someone else's words, even though I do have to speak my own later, is a good sacrifice, and I am glad to make it. But this is work in the trenches. This is work on the ground, and as one person, there is a limit to the impact I can have here. I hate that there are so many speakers of Q'anjob'al and Mam, here in my state, who don't have access to the language services I can give to Spanish speakers. I know that there are young people growing up here, who speak English and either know or have the opportunity to know those Mayan languages, or other languages of lesser diffusion. I want to help inspire and train those people. I don't want to walk into a room with a family from Guatemala and have my heart sink because I know we're going to have to make do, because there is no interpreter for Chuj. I want to walk in and be able to say, "Actually, this family speaks Chuj as their primary language. Let me get you the right interpreter," and then make a few phone calls and see the relief on the mom's face.

So far this has been a vague dream, an idea. But today I met Carmelina, who grew up as a migrant worker and now works as one of 3 certified court interpreters for Akatek in the whole country, and is part of a company called Maya Interpreters LLC, and my idea turned into hope. It was good to see that there are people in the world aware of and working on this. Maybe I can get in there with them and start pulling some weight here in my state, where the Mayan community is bigger than I ever imagined.