The Littlest Interpreters : Some bilingual children must grow up fast as they translate an English-speaking world for their Spanish-speaking parents.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Adriana Anguiano silently studies a school handout. The 7-year-old takes a deep breath and, in a sweet sing-song voice, translates every three words of English into Spanish for her mother. Then it happens. Her worst fear. She is baffled by a new word, a big word: I - N - T - E - R - E - S - T-E - D .

“Sometimes I have trouble with those kinds of words,” Adriana says. “Like Pacific Bell. That’s a hard one to change into Spanish.”

But somehow, Adriana manages. She has to. Her parents and younger brother and sister, all of whom speak little or no English, depend on her. At the supermarket, community center, gas station and on the phone--sometimes jotting down job information for her father, a construction worker--Adriana Anguiano is her family’s connection to the English-speaking world.

The Anguianos are not alone. Of the estimated 3 million Latinos in Los Angeles County, about 12% do not speak English and 16% read only Spanish-language newspapers. What’s more, Los Angeles Unified School District officials report there are 330,000 Latino children enrolled in L.A. schools, and they estimate that almost 75% of their parents speak only Spanish or are limited in their English-language skills.

Indeed, as the Latino population of Los Angeles County soars, so does the demand for children to serve as interpreters for their parents.

Countywide, public service agencies as well as public utility companies, banks, supermarkets, and other parts of the service sector report efforts to recruit and hire more bilingual personnel.

But they cannot even begin to bridge the language gap. And that’s why children like Adriana find themselves thrust into some very adult situations. Their parents have no choice. While experts may sound warnings about cutting childhood too short, the bilingual skills of some very special children are the key to family survival.

Alicia Anguiano, 31, says she and her husband, Manuel Rodrigo Anguiano, 33, would be lost without their daughter, a second-grader at Canoga Park Elementary School.

The Anguianos have lived in Canoga Park for the last six years. They haven’t visited their families in El Rosario--a small Mexican village near Guadalajara with one pay telephone outside a grocery store--for more than three years because they haven’t had the money. Alicia’s last phone conversation with her mother was four months ago. She recalls telling her mother how proud she is of Adriana’s abilities to interpret for her.

“One day, my husband and I hope to speak English as well as we speak Spanish,” Alicia says. “But right now we’re just concerned with making a living, with putting food on the table and a roof over our heads. For us, English classes have to wait. There is no time to take them now. When the children are older, we’ll learn.”

Until then, the Anguianos will depend on their daughter and the basic survival phrases--”Where is the phone? Do you have a restroom?”--she has taught them.

At home, a one-bedroom apartment in a small, two-story complex, Adriana likes to read her favorite English-language book, “Anna and Sarah” to her siblings, Rodrigo, 4, and Ofelia, 3. “I want them to learn English,” Adriana says. “My mother wants to learn also. We sit down and I read my books to her. I know she’ll learn because she wants to. But sometimes it’s hard for her. I know because sometimes it’s hard for me. Sometimes when my mother asks me to help her I don’t always know what words to say in English.”

Not only does this 7-year-old help her parents with the grocery shopping, notices from school and the bank, Adriana plays a critical role in family finances: She is the one who answers the telephone and passes on job leads for her father.

“Without English parents are placed in a fragile situation the moment they move here,” says Sergio Martinez-Romero, president of the California Hispanic Psychological Assn. and an assistant professor at Cal State Los Angeles. “They come with the hope of bettering themselves. They are concerned with food, shelter and providing for their families, and learning a new language is not an immediate concern.”

Some experts say children may come to resent their parents because of the dependent relationship. But others point to a more immediate concern: According to Dr. Ray Ceniceroz, chairman of the Chicano Studies Department at East Los Angeles College, “children are taken out of school to go interpret, and parents soon come to rely on that dependency from their kids. Any agency that deals with Latinos should have staff personnel who are bilingual. It’s a cop-out if they don’t because children should not be made responsible for doing that job, especially if they are interpreting things that they don’t know anything about.”

Candida Fernandez, principal of San Fernando Elementary School where the majority of the students are Latino, says children interpret for their parents “all the time. We know that sometimes children are absent because they may have had to help interpret some personal business for a parent.”

Diane Villafana, principal of Hart Elementary School in Canoga Park, says a week doesn’t go by when a child isn’t called upon by a parent to help interpret business and has to miss school.

“We have an 88% Hispanic enrollment. Half of my student population is Spanish-speaking, but those kids know enough conversational English or the basic survival English skills to help their parents translate if they have to,” she says. “And, often they do. And I’m talking about children as young as 6, 7 and 8 years old.”

She says her staff discourages parents from taking their children out of school to translate. “But if there is no one else to assist, then the parent has no choice but to depend on his or her child.”

Not only can translation be a difficult experience for younger children, it can be frightening experience, too.

Iran Peralta, 11, has always helped his Spanish-speaking mother and father bridge the language gap. He recalls a particularly trying day last year when his bilingual skills were put to the test as he stood between his father and the emergency room doctor at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

His mother, Socorro, had slipped on a freshly mopped floor and was rushed to the center. Everyone in the family feared the worst: paralysis.

Now, in the emergency room, the doctor suspected Iran’s 49-year-old mother had damaged her spine. The doctor rushed her into the X-ray lab. Iran’s sister, Kenia, 13, accompanied Socorro to help translate while Iran went with his father, Luis.

Because the doctor only spoke English, he could not communicate his concerns to Luis. Iran became the family spokesman.

The doctor explained Socorro might require more tests, possibly an operation, maybe weeks in the hospital and months to convalesce at home. Iran’s father would have to sign a consent form, and insurance and hospital costs needed to be discussed.

Within minutes Iran had everything under control, calmly interpreting the conversation between doctor and dad.

“I was feeling nervous,” recalls Iran, a sixth-grader at Columbus Junior High School in Canoga Park. “I was scared because it was my mom who was in pain.”

And he felt especially frustrated because he couldn’t translate all the medical words.

“Some of the words were unusual to me and that made it scarier,” Iran recalls, thankful that his mother required no more than a shot, medication and eight days of rest at home.

Says Socorro: “If it hadn’t been for the children I don’t know what would have become of me and my husband. Sometimes we don’t realize how helpful they are to us until a near tragedy strikes. Then we see how grown-up our children can be.”

Thinking back, Iran says, “It would have been difficult for my parents to have communicated at the hospital. I felt good helping and speaking Spanish and English. It was something I had to do for my parents.”

Faustino Velasco Jr., 11, also helps his parents with his interpreting skills. Once a month, Faustino, a fifth-grader at San Fernando Elementary School, assists his Mexican-born parents with bill-paying. When the bills arrive, he sits down with his parents and reads them in English and translates them into Spanish, noting when each is due and how much must be paid.

“Last month we went to the gas company and I spoke to someone at the counter about the bill,” he says. From there Faustino, his parents and his sister, Susy, 10, drove to the telephone company and then the bank. Again, Faustino took care of business in two languages until a Spanish-speaking teller came to the window.

After the bank, the family drove to a mall to shop for an organ. Once again, Faustino played a critical role in a financial transaction.

The youngster spoke to a sales clerk about the cost of the organ, the warranty and how the instrument worked, taking his cues from his dad and the salesman.

“I understood everything,” Faustino remembers. “For me, it’s a lot of responsibility because everything I help with involves money and I know how hard my parents work. But my parents feel they can trust the people I’m speaking with.”

Still, sometimes Faustino says, “I get nervous because everyone’s asking a lot of questions, sometimes all at once. And sometimes I can’t answer all the questions, and I don’t want people to get upset with me.”

Faustino’s mother Juana says she and her husband “hate to bother our son” with interpreting for them, “but it’s necessary.”

When the family moved from one house to another a few years ago, she says it was Faustino who helped get the light, gas, water and telephone turned off at the old residence and turned on at the new one.

“He made calls to the insurance company and the bank to notify them of our change of address,” she says.

“My husband and I have decided that by the time our children are in junior high school we want to dedicate ourselves to seriously learning English. Maybe by then I won’t need to work and I’ll have my evenings to study English,” she says. “Right now we have little time to take classes and my husband and I have to work everyday except Sundays because we want a good life for our children--a better life than we had in Mexico. We don’t want our children to suffer.

“Faustino is my little adult boy,” his mother says. “His help is invaluable.”

Claudia Lazo, 13, and her brother, Eric, 14, often assist their mother, Reina Lazo, who has come to depend on her children’s translating skills.

“My children help me so much,” says Lazo, a Salvadoran who immigrated with her children to California nine years ago and today lives in Culver City. “If I have to fill out a paper for credit or go to a store to buy or return something I always have one of my children go with me to help with English.”

During the week Lazo cares for a 2 1/2-year-old child. “I have a good relationship with the boy’s parents,” she says. “If the child’s mother wants me to know something about the baby she tells one of my children and if I need to know something I’ll ask my daughter or son to interpret.”

On weekends, Lazo, a single parent, also works as a maid cleaning two homes. Claudia, a sixth-grader at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica, spends every Saturday at the homes translating for her mother and her employers. Claudia also helps with the scrubbing, sweeping and dusting.

“Without Claudia the jobs would be harder to get,” Lazo says.

Says Claudia: “Ever since my brother and I could speak English we’ve been helping our mom. Eric has always helped by translating important paper work and paying the bills, and I’ve helped by interpreting for the women my mom works for. Whenever my mom finds a new house to clean, I go with her on the interviews.”

And Lazo always gets the job.

But one day she hopes to land one on her own.

“I know the importance of learning English,” she says, adding that speaking only Spanish in an English-speaking society is frustrating “because you want to communicate and you can’t. You know what you want to say in Spanish, and you’re wishing all the time that you could say it in English and you just can’t.”

Her daughter says she tells her mother not to feel intimidated because she doesn’t speak English.

“I know one day when she doesn’t have to work so hard she’ll have the time and energy to go to night school” to learn English, Claudia says. Until then Claudia says she’ll always be around to interpret for her mother whether it’s shopping at the mall or helping her with a job interview “because she’s my mom and I love her.”

Adriana Anguiano says the same thing about her mother as they go to medical appointments, the bank and the grocery store.

A recent trip to a Ralphs supermarket required Adriana’s special skills. Standing in the produce section, Alicia needed help with the prices of cherimoya, an exotic fruit. Adriana spotted a man wearing a Ralphs name tag and asked for his assistance.

“My mom wants to know how much this costs,” Adriana said to Daryl Lawrence, manager of operations.

Lawrence, who said he is used to seeing children interpret for their parents, told Adriana the fruit sold for $4.99 per pound. Adriana translated. Alicia gasped. And then they all laughed.

“We’ll stick with bananas,” Alicia said in Spanish, her eyes bouncing from Adriana to Lawrence.

After Lawrence asked if he could help with anything else, Adriana consulted with her mother and responded: “No, thank you.”

Then the little girl paused and added, “Wait. My mom says your store always has good fruit and lettuce and tomatoes. She likes your store very much.”

Without any hesitation or coaxing, Adriana extended her hand for a handshake, a gesture she makes with almost everyone who helps her family.

Later, at the checkout counter, Adriana watched the cashier ring up their groceries.

“She always stays near me, especially at the checkout,” Alicia said as they gathered their sacks, Rodrigo and Ofelia following behind. “Just in case there’s a problem and just in case there is someone who doesn’t speak Spanish. Adriana is aware of things like that.”

Said, Adriana, “I help her clean the dishes, sweep the floor and I help her with English. It makes me feel happy in my heart because I like to help my mother.”