"[T]he message I get is the following: Spanish-speaking people only deserve our minimal effort, and they are either too ignorant to notice or too grateful to be here to complain."
OMG, YES. I feel like this is true for all speakers of other languages and definitely very apparent for Spanish-speakers. My first career was teaching middle school ENL to students from all over the world, and I fought so hard to get official school docs translated for families, which were their legal right to have, but no one cared. This was in the NYC DOE that had plenty of resources for translation and interpretation, and these families didn't get what they deserved. Every parent-teacher conference, I would inform them of their rights, but they never brought it up.
And in my second career, I end up interpreting for people when I most definitely should NOT be. I speak decent Spanish and can express myself but am in no way a native speaker, though the minute people hear me talking in Spanish, they start asking. I was in a police department with a client a few weeks ago as her emotional support when they wanted me to interpret. This was after one of the officers who was present at arrest said he spoke Spanish. So I said, "Don't you think you'd be able to explain better?" And he goes, "Well, I actually don't speak Spanish that well. I just understand it." WTF!?! So that was how my client got arrested for not understanding police officer's instructions.
I appreciate the rant! It's amazing how many situations I've been in where I've had to serve as an impromptu interpreter because no one in the organization/institution spoke Spanish or only knew a little bit. So many of these places don't want to invest in actual professional translators/interpreters though and too many people also pass off their one-year of (bad) high school Spanish as "Advanced" on their resumes, and welp! Turns out you can't wing knowing a language in professional situations. Hope to see you at AWP!
"[T]he message I get is the following: Spanish-speaking people only deserve our minimal effort, and they are either too ignorant to notice or too grateful to be here to complain."
OMG, YES. I feel like this is true for all speakers of other languages and definitely very apparent for Spanish-speakers. My first career was teaching middle school ENL to students from all over the world, and I fought so hard to get official school docs translated for families, which were their legal right to have, but no one cared. This was in the NYC DOE that had plenty of resources for translation and interpretation, and these families didn't get what they deserved. Every parent-teacher conference, I would inform them of their rights, but they never brought it up.
And in my second career, I end up interpreting for people when I most definitely should NOT be. I speak decent Spanish and can express myself but am in no way a native speaker, though the minute people hear me talking in Spanish, they start asking. I was in a police department with a client a few weeks ago as her emotional support when they wanted me to interpret. This was after one of the officers who was present at arrest said he spoke Spanish. So I said, "Don't you think you'd be able to explain better?" And he goes, "Well, I actually don't speak Spanish that well. I just understand it." WTF!?! So that was how my client got arrested for not understanding police officer's instructions.
Sorry for the rant. I'll be at AWP '25.
I appreciate the rant! It's amazing how many situations I've been in where I've had to serve as an impromptu interpreter because no one in the organization/institution spoke Spanish or only knew a little bit. So many of these places don't want to invest in actual professional translators/interpreters though and too many people also pass off their one-year of (bad) high school Spanish as "Advanced" on their resumes, and welp! Turns out you can't wing knowing a language in professional situations. Hope to see you at AWP!