Parent Teacher Conferences

Wednesday night I was asked to translate at a parent teacher conference at a local junior high school. It was a great experience, a real down-in-the-trenches translating job. Some of it was very hard, and some of it easy. Telling parents their kids are doing good in school felt good, but explaining to them how their hijos were failing to do their work felt kind of uncomfortable. It was such a change from the world of academic Spanish. I wasn't talking about "larger ways of defining the world around me", but the more everyday things like homework, tests and paying attention to the teacher.

Three or four times a week I get people who call the call center but don't speak English, but I don't get as much opportunity to speak to real native speakers every day as often as I would like, not like I did when I worked ten hours a day with native speakers.

On my way to the event tonight, I felt a little nervous. I was thinking,"It's been about six months since I did something like this, I hope I do ok." When I have doubts like this, I remember the only way anyone gets better at translating is to simply do it. Sure,you can go to school and drill verbs and vocabulary for hours on end. But unless you put yourself in situations where you have to stretch yourself, situations where there is a real possibility that you could end up looking dumb, without that kind of stress, you will always be stuck at the same level.

I think it's that fear of looking dumb that keeps many of us from improving beyond what I call, "Restaurant Spanish", ("¿Donde está el baño?" and "Más cerveza por favor"). As uncomfortable as it feels at the time, there is no substitution for real conversation. It's messy, it's a little confusing at first and it can be uncomfortable, like the times I had to tell parents why their child wasn't a good student, but even that was rewarding in a way. It was rewarding because they understood what was expected of them and their children. It was rewarding because my translation helped them to be a part of their child's education. I remember one lady I spoke to, she had a look that came over her face when she realized that her son had been less than truthful to her when he said he had no homework. This sly little smile that came over her face that unmistakably said, "Now I understand what's going on around here, and things are going to be different!" The look on her face made all the other uncomfortable feelings worth it.

-Juanito