Sitting somewhere inside a courthouse in the Bahamas, a young Kristina Sweeting would hear the same message repeated twice, once by a stranger and then again by her mother.
"She'd have court cases to go to and sometimes she wouldn't have anyone leaving us so she take me with me and I kind of sit in the back and watch her, and I just thought it was fascinating," she said.
Her mother, who's originally from Peru, worked in the Caribbean country as a translator, helping Spanish-speakers navigate the local court system.
Sweeting has followed in her mother's footsteps, becoming a translator and an interpreter for Spanish and Italian. Now based on P.E.I., she helps non-English speakers from Latin American countries do essential things such as go to the doctor or sign up their children for school.
"A translator works more with the written portion of the language," she said. "The interpreter, it's more so with the talking part of the language ... which requires the interpreter to listen and comprehend, and to also translate the language at the same time."
Working with police, doctors
The Immigrant and Refugee Service Association of P.E.I. offers its clients translation and interpretation services. About 90 people who have been trained in-house are on call to assist newcomers settle into their new home.
Lu Xinghai learned about the services in 2010 when he was taking a Holland College program to improve his English skills.
Lu, who is from Shanghai, said he decided to get training and put his name on the association's on-call list after seeing the high number of people coming to the Island from China at the time.
"They can't understand some things, like the way of living and how to communicate with the people and how to encounter some unfamiliar situations. They don't have that kind of experience," he said.
Lu said a lot of the work involves helping clients navigate institutions that work differently in their home country. For example, he lets them know that in Canadian hospitals you're expected to wait while staff prioritize other patients.
Other situations are trickier to navigate.
"I was at the police station one time. One girl went to the hospital, said, 'OK I have some injury and need to be treated.' Then afterwards, after checking everything the doctor immediately called 911, calls the police station, and says 'OK, there's kind of the potential [for] domestic violence,'" he said.
"The police just check everything and then afterwards arrest the boy. So you see it is quite different. I was there, and I participated in all the proceedings."
Lu said putting your emotions aside when dealing with that kind of situation is one of the most challenging things about the job.
One time, he was called to help out in a case of impaired driving. Police were asking the person involved whether he wanted a blood alcohol test.
"Sometimes you [think] to persuade people. 'OK, in this way, maybe you will have a better result.' Or you say, 'You will refuse that, it will be much better,' though this is kind of misleading,' he said.
"To explain everything in a clear way is the only thing I can do ... put personal feelings away and just try to ensure [you're] 100 per cent correct."
'They need our sympathy'
Bayan Radi arrived with her family from Qatar in 2009 and started to interpret for IRSA the following year, assisting clients from Arabic-speaking countries such as Libya and Iraq.
Her daughters, Nadeen and Raneem Subeh, started working along with her in 2015, a few years before the number of Syrian refugees arriving on the Island increased exponentially.
Some of the people they helped at the time went through immense suffering. One woman was injured by a sniper while fleeing the war with her family. Another couple had to resort to begging for food and money while waiting to get to Canada.
"They left their homes and they left everything behind them. Some people went to Lebanon, to Jordan but didn't have anything," Radi said.
Radi said she will never forget some of the stories she's heard from people she has helped, noting that being a good listener and showing empathy are some of the most important skills for an interpreter.
"They want to tell their stories. It's that kind of sympathy, you know, they need our sympathy," she said. "That's why, you know, they call me anytime, it doesn't matter; night, evening or morning, I keep answering them. I don't reject their call. I try my best not to reject their calls."
The family has established friendships with some of their former clients, continuing to help out on occasion.
"Sometimes we do gatherings. Like family gatherings, because most of them there are kind of my age. Of course, they do have families," said Nadine, who is in her late 20s.
Sometimes she helps with taxes and bureaucratic letters.
"Just finding our way around P.E.I. basically is what we needed help with and we did find people to help us around so we're basically paying it forward," Raneem said.
'Hard on the brain'
Sweeting, who also does translation and interpreting for the Chief Public Health Office [CPHO], said she regularly talks to her mother about work, especially on "bad days."
"Translating can be kind of hard on the brain after a day of doing it. It's ... a lot of work mentally," she said.
"The thing with interpreting and translating in general is you can't translate or interpret word for word. You have to translate the meaning of what the person is trying to get across. It's all about listening and making sure you catch everything, every aspect of who the person is trying to portray. And that it can be difficult at times."
But she said at the end of the day, it's all worth it to hear how grateful some of her clients are for what she does — even if it's very simple.
"[Through the CPHO] I've been able to work with a lot of the temporary foreign workers that come here from Mexico. And it's probably one of the most gratifying experiences," she said.
"Most of them don't speak any English at all. So when they come here, they kind of feel isolated, I guess. They're away from their family, they had to isolate [when] all the restrictions were in place. And simple things like needing more coffee and sugar during their isolation period, or if they wouldn't get their meal ... the only way they had to communicate was for me, really.
"So it was a great experience to be able to help them communicate, because otherwise, some of them told me they don't know what they would have done."
No comments:
Post a Comment