Interpreters Help Unlock Civic Process

Rosa Mesa moved from Mexico to Huntington Park 25 years ago but long felt left out of her city’s civic life because she does not speak English.

That changed last year when the city hired a professional interpreter to provide instantaneous Spanish translations of all regular City Council meetings.

Mesa now attends almost every meeting and--with the help of the interpreter--testifies about crime problems and listens to Spanish translations of the council discussing street sweeping contracts, planning the latest holiday carnival and introducing local beauty pageant winners.

“Now I don’t have an excuse not to participate,” said Mesa, who is now a block captain in her Neighborhood Watch program and an activist in local politics.

A growing number of cities in Los Angeles County with large Latino populations staff every council meeting with a professional interpreter to bridge the communication gap between Spanish-speaking residents and their elected representatives. The interpreters even translate the occasional spat between lawmakers and insults hurled by angry constituents.

At least five cities now have interpreters at all their council meetings. Although it has sparked controversy in some communities about the effect on immigrants’ assimilation, more cities are considering joining the movement.

Around the state and country, cities with sizable Latino populations like New York, San Antonio, Tucson, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oxnard and Santa Ana provide interpreters at council meetings if a request is made in advance. But the trend in Los Angeles County cities goes a step further by making interpreters a regular city hall fixture, as integral and common at council meetings as the city attorney and the city clerk.

Muriel Jerome-O’Keeffe, president of the American Translators Assn., a Virginia-based group with 7,000 members, said Los Angeles County is leading the way in hiring interpreters in city halls and other public meeting places.

“We are seeing it more and more with the influx of immigrants,” she said.

Latino activists hope more cities will consider hiring professional interpreters for all civic meetings.

“We think this is very important to help Latino immigrants participate in their community,” said Rosalind Gold, a senior director at the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

But the trend has raised some questions even among Latinos: How far should a city go to accommodate non-English speakers? And do interpreters discourage immigrants from learning English and assimilating into American society?

Supporters of the interpreters dismiss such concerns, saying the interpreters increase public participation in local government.

“A lot of folks speak Spanish because they can’t express themselves as well in English,” said South Gate City Councilman Hector De La Torre, who recently introduced a motion to hire an interpreter for his city. The city staff is studying the motion amid some concern about such civic bilingualism.

Professional interpreters are on staff in Southern California courtrooms, hospitals and schools for use when needed. Experts say it is not surprising that interpreters are becoming regulars at council meetings, translating the comments of the elected officials into Spanish and interpreting into English the testimony of Spanish speakers.

“What you are seeing is just a sign of the times,” said H. Eric Shockman, an associate professor of political science at USC.

In Los Angeles County, a language other than English is spoken in nearly half the households, according to the 1990 U.S. census. In the Los Angeles Basin, 31% of Latino households speak Spanish exclusively, according to Los Altos, Calif.-based Access Worldwide, Cultural Access Group.

Samantha Lubrani, a state-certified interpreter with 10 years experience, works as a court interpreter by day and translates at night for the cities of Huntington Park and Bell Gardens.

Interpreting is not an exact science, she said. She often struggles with colloquialisms and regional expressions that were not taught when she earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish at UCLA.

“If you have five different interpreters interpreting the same thing you will have five different ways of saying it,” she said.

Often the discussions she must translate at council meetings get emotional--and sometimes downright ugly.

For example, during a Bell Gardens meeting in March, Maria Jackson, a local activist, told the council in Spanish that she supported a recall of three council members she accused of being corrupt.

Lubrani dutifully translated every insult.

“You are not giving the orders any more,” Lubrani said in her translation. “The community is in charge. We will keep fighting against you.”

Lubrani said she sometimes tones down the nastier comments but tries to convey the meaning of every speaker, even if they attack the officials who hired her.

“So far, the council understands that I am only translating and it is part of the job,” said Lubrani.

Officials say the cost of providing the translations is reasonable, even for cash-poor cities like Bell Gardens and Huntington Park.

Lubrani earns $390 per month to translate at Bell Gardens’ biweekly council and Planning Commission meetings. Huntington Park used a $5,000 grant from the local Sister City Assn. to buy a broadcast system that includes a microphone for the interpreter and 20 headsets in which the audience hears the translations. The unit is similar to the system used in the United Nations but is portable so retrofitting the meeting hall is not required.

City hall interpreters are most prevalent in communities in Southeast Los Angeles County where Latinos have been a majority of the population for nearly 20 years but have only taken the reins of power in municipal government in the past decade. The cities of Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, Lynwood and Maywood have all hired interpreters. South Gate and Compton are studying the cost of doing the same.

Other cities with heavily Latino communities, such as Baldwin Park in the San Gabriel Valley and Watsonville in central California, have interpreters at every council meeting. The county board of commissioners in Miami-Dade County, Fla., also provides interpreters at every board meeting.

“I think it’s motivated by good intentions and mainly to broaden participation in local government,” said Assemblyman Marco Antonio Firebaugh, a Democrat whose district includes most of the Latino communities of Southeast Los Angeles County.

When the South Gate City Council instructed its staff last month to study the cost of hiring an interpreter for its biweekly meetings, a debate erupted over going one step further--providing Spanish translations of the council minutes and audio tapes of the interpreter’s translation of the meetings.

Councilman Raul Moriel said he was worried that those extra measures would be too costly. “I could see that this is getting out of hand,” he said.

In an interview, Moriel said he supports the idea of providing an interpreter but wonders if it will discourage Spanish speakers from learning English.

Moriel, who was born in Mexico, said his childhood teachers in Texas did not allow him to speak Spanish. He resented it at the time, but now feels it forced him to learn English faster.

A more heated debate was sparked in June in the northern California city of Redwood City when a Latino group asked the mostly white council to broadcast its meetings in Spanish and English.

The proposal was strongly criticized by former Redwood City Councilman Fernando Vega who said: “Everything in this country is done in English. I think it is important that [Spanish speakers] learn English.”

Supporters of the proposal noted that many government agencies, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, already provide documents in Spanish and English. The idea was put on hold for further study.

Huntington Park Councilman Rick Loya shrugs off suggestions that interpreters will discourage residents from learning English. He said it is more important to help residents get the most out of City Hall, whether they speak English or not.

“We’ve got things to do in City Hall and sometimes we have to translate to get things done,” he said.

Yvonne Correa, a Nicaraguan immigrant who lives in Huntington Park, said she was reluctant to attend council meetings before the interpreter and headsets were added. Now she attends most meetings, recently to complain about trash on Pacific Boulevard, the city’s main business thoroughfare.

“I know it’s good to have the headsets,” she said in Spanish. “But I try not to use them all the time so that I can improve my English.”