My lack of money and planning meant that I'd be staying in Ohio with the snow for spring break. Aware of the fact that I knew passable Spanish, my mom asked for my help. It wasn't quite phrased as a request, more like payment for all the cooking I had blackmailed her into doing (Mom
I miss your food so much. . .). My mom, a hand therapist, wanted to know if I would come in and translate for a patient of hers who didn't speak much English.
I was a bit apprehensive at first. Like many others, I took four years of high school Spanish, suffered through vocabulary quizzes and grammar tests, and bemoaned the apparent futility of the task I was performing. However, I was enough of a nerd to stick with it for four years.
I figured the guy would probably resent my bumbling attempts at conversation and simply write me off as one more ignorant person with a misguided idea of doing a good deed. However, as I sat down and met the person to whom I would be speaking, I realized that I really did want to help. Here was a person with a mangled hand, trying to get it to work again. My mom was doing her best to fix it, but she needed to know more. He simply couldn't answer her questions.
For the next 45 minutes I translated for my mom and relayed her patient's answers. With my assistance she could ask follow-up questions, and suggest ways to improve strength and flexibility in his hand. I wasn't suddenly speaking effortless Spanish, but I could definitely be understood.
What I wasn't expecting was to be given questions by the patient to translate into English for my mom. I had forgotten how scary it could be to have a debilitating injury. I had failed to remember how many questions I always want to ask the doctor. Is it supposed to hurt this much? Exactly how am I supposed to do this exercise? How much better am I going to get?
I hadn't thought about being on the other side of the language barrier. Aside from feeling frustrated because he couldn't give the therapist what she wanted, this man also couldn't get from her the reassurance that we all want in a hard time ' someone to tell us, Yea it's going to be OK. You just have to trust me.
As I watched his face go from worried to relieved and hopeful (and saw him beginning to understand how to reuse his hand), I felt that I had done something worthwhile.
Vocabulary quizzes still are the bane of many high school students' existences, and verb conjugations are still mind numbing. But I did remember the point of studying a language in the first place: Language is one of the most fundamental ways people communicate with each other.
Yes, my grammar has a lot of weak spots, and there are plenty of words I don't know. But I tried. And I wasn't laughed at or resented because I wasn't perfect. My attempts were appreciated because, in the end, they made two people's lives a little bit easier.
17
Archives
Alex Hazlett
