New Spanish Translation Class Provides Helpful Interpretations

What would it be like to be able to converse and write completely freely in multiple languages? Well, advanced Spanish students know the deal. Not only can they speak completely fluently, they have worked on their writing and grammar to the point where it has become nearly completely accurate. Now the real task is putting those superb Spanish skills to use.

New at Lincoln for the 2013-2014 school year is the advanced Spanish Translation and Interpretation class, taught by Señora Straus during 6th period. It is designed as a Career Exploration program, preparing students with the skills they will need should they choose to go into a career in the translation field following high school or college. Coming soon, the class will help the Lion Tales staff flesh out its “En Español” section.

Señora Straus says, “It is a career exploration class, for students who have had exposure to Spanish for at least 3 years. We have a lot of students who are bilingual, and they are not aware of the value of their bilingualism. They don’t know that it is so potent, so this opens their eyes.”

Walk into the class, and you will be met with the sight of advanced Spanish students avidly working to translate documents, most often from English into Spanish, but also Spanish to English. The source of these documents? The class draws a good portion of its material from texts the teacher provides, as well as local newspapers, which they translate to obtain more practice in their skills. The ultimate goal, though, is to get the students involved in providing valuable service to their community through translation, and eventually to secure job internships.

The Future of Translation: Career Exploration

Straus explains that after students make their way up the sequence of course options in Spanish, “You don’t want to just drop Spanish, you want to do something that explores a career. So the translation and interpretation careers are a really fast-growing area or sector. My goal is to have them exposed to the types of translation, like education, legal, medical, media, entertainment, things like that, and then help them find internships, so when they go to college they already have been exposed to a job environment, and a possible career.”

She adds, “I want to see the students feel empowered. The way we get the feeling of empowerment is preparing them for a career. Not just worksheets, but doing something to help somebody.”

The class plans to begin providing service to the community through independent translation projects. During the fall semester, students have each been given the challenge to find their own “community partner,” an organization or other source they will work with individually or in a small team to translate any written material into Spanish.

Straus comments about the project, “It’s a service learning project, so the kids have to contact people, and if they don’t find anything within the school, they have the option of contacting a company. We have to seek the partners out. I’m going to do some research for them, but the students need to be proactive.

“I gave them a long list of suggestions, O’Connor Hospital, Mercury News, all these organizations. Everyone needs translators because not everybody speaks English, and not everybody speaks English well enough,” Straus continues.

One community partner students have already coordinated with to get their translation underway is the school administration, which provides information and messages for the students to translate prior to being posted on Lincoln’s website, such as bulletins and the Principal’s Message. Translating the information makes it more accessible to parents who may be native Spanish speakers, but still want to be involved with the school. Students will be required to put in at least fifteen hours into their respective projects, which will double as community service hours.

Partnership with Lion Tales

The Translation class is especially of interest to Lion Tales because the class will become a partner to Lion Tales’ online newspaper, providing literal Spanish translations of the many articles the Lion Tales staff has written and plan to write in the future. This service will prove to be beneficial to both parties, making Lion Tales more accessible to speakers of another language, and creating a new “job” for the Translation students to complete.

You better look out, Lion Tales readers, things around here are about to get a lot more bilingual.