Small Voice for Her Parents
Jessica Ramirez already has a pretty busy schedule, what with 5th grade and ballet class and tutoring after school.
But the bright, affectionate girl with lively brown eyes also juggles another set of duties: After school, she sorts through the mail at her Boyle Heights home and goes over the bills with her parents. She marks down appointments and deadlines on the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. If the phone rings, she jumps to get it. She sits down in the evenings with her younger brother and helps him with his homework. She accompanies her mother everywhere--to the grocery store, doctor’s office, teacher’s conferences--and stays at her elbow, ready to help explain a product or a medical prescription or her progress in school.
Jessica, 11, is her family’s gatekeeper, the main conduit between her Spanish-speaking parents and the English-speaking world. As the eldest child and the most bilingual speaker in the house, she shoulders the responsibility of translating.
“I feel like an adult already,” she says matter-of-factly. “Just a small adult.”
Translating at a young age is a common experience in immigrant families, one that helps children gain increased confidence, greater fluency in both languages and a broader knowledge of society. But the cumulative burden of what researchers call “language brokering” also puts children like Jessica in the awkward position of trying to decipher for their parents a world they have barely learned to navigate.
“These kids don’t simply interpret, they act as surrogate parents for themselves and their younger siblings,” said Lucy Tse, an assistant professor of education at Loyola Marymount University who has studied language brokering. “They make adult decisions, sometimes without the benefit of adult sophistication and knowledge.”
Thrust into this grown-up world, many children feel overwhelmed and ill-equipped. The role reversal sometimes causes friction between them and the frustrated parents who rely on them to communicate. Some children resent being drafted into service--called away from their friends and playtime--every time their parents need a translator.
Although the experience of language brokers transcends America’s many waves of immigration, experts are just starting to recognize these pressures. Confronted with a mounting number of non-English speakers, institutions that once relied heavily on children to interpret are altering their policies. For example, in the Alhambra school district, where about 40% of the 20,000 students translate for their families at home, officials now discourage children from taking on that role at school.
Says professor Tse: “We need to better understand how these kids survive.”
Parents Never Found Time to Study English
Jessica’s family immigrated from Guanajuato, Mexico, when she was 8 months old. Her father, Martin, works as a handyman. Her mother, Dolores, is a cook. Like many working-class immigrants, neither has ever found the time to study English, although Martin bought an English course called Ingles Sin Barreras--”English Without Barriers”--that lines the living room wall of their small Boyle Heights home.
“I understand a little, but I can’t express myself,” Dolores said. “So wherever I go, I take Jessica . . . and I feel secure in what I’m doing.”
Jessica takes it in stride when she has to write a note for her mother to sign, or speak to adults who call for her parents. She admits, though, to often feeling a little lost.
“Like a live dictionary,” she says. “Sometimes I feel nervous because I don’t really understand what something means. I just go, ‘Uh, I’m not really sure.’ I just guess.”
She frets about her family’s finances. Sometimes she gives her parents back her $1.50 allowance to help pay for utilities. Once she felt bad because the water bill was high and she thought it was her fault. Another time she dreamed there was a huge bill and she didn’t know how to pay for it.
“She sees us worried sometimes,” her mother says. “But I think it’s good for her because it gives her maturity. She doesn’t just ask for things because she knows you have to work for money.”
One recent evening, Jessica and her brother Hugo sat cross-legged on the living room floor, hunched over their homework, their parents watching from the couch.
Hugo, an energetic 6-year-old, furrowed his brow as he tried to read a practice work sheet for the Stanford 9 test.
“How many . . .” He struggled over the next word. His mother looked over his shoulder, trying to decipher what it said. He looked at his mother, then turned to his sister.
“Jessica, can you please tell me what this says?” Hugo asked.
Jessica read it out loud carefully: “How many slides are there at the school and at the park?”
As Dolores watched, the children went through the problems together. She tried to follow along, asking Jessica what the questions meant.
“Is he doing it right?” she asked.
As the two children worked on the photocopied assignment, the mother looked through the papers in Hugo’s school folder, a puzzled look on her face.
“It’s frustrating,” Dolores said. “It makes me feel powerless. I wish I could help him, and it makes me sad that I can’t. But I’m happy she can.”
Duties Often Begin Soon After Arrival
In studies of Latino and Asian American immigrants, researcher Tse found many children who started translating within a few years of arriving in the United States. They were soon interpreting medical prescription information, mortgage statements, county assistance forms and other complicated documents. They screened phone calls for their parents and sorted through correspondence. They translated for teachers and doctors, police officers and government officials.
Many of these children, in interviews with The Times, said they realize how much their parents count on them. One fifth-grade boy in Boyle Heights goes to job interviews with his father; another helped his parents negotiate the purchase of their house. An 18-year-old Alhambra High School student who recently immigrated from China responds to the pressure of handling all her family’s business by teaching herself five new words in English every night.
Ulysses Quesada, 13, felt tongue-tied on a recent visit to a Boyle Heights health clinic with his mother. She was complaining of headaches, and the doctor asked Ulysses to explain the medicine he was prescribing.
Aware of the importance of the exchange, the seventh-grader said he felt uncomfortable as he stumbled over the words. “Sometimes I feel dumb, standing there trying to figure it out and everyone is looking at me.”
Soon after 11-year-old Mavis Lin arrived from Taiwan with her family, she had to translate for her parents at the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles. She felt the same confusion.
“Sometimes I don’t know what the right word is in Mandarin,” says Mavis, now 16 and a sophomore at Alhambra High. “I don’t always know what the document says, so I try to explain what it means without using the exact word.”
But translating has also made her more mature and self-sufficient, she said. “I feel proud I can help my parents. When we came here, we weren’t independent. After I learned how to speak English, I could help them all by myself. We don’t need anyone else’s help.”
Yet it bothers her that, every night, her mother asks her to spend 30 minutes helping her little sister with her homework, even though Mavis has her own homework and piano to practice.
“I tell her I can’t do it, I don’t have time. My mom thinks I’m lying. She says, ‘You have time to read the newspapers, to listen to music.’ I tell her I need to relax sometimes.”
Generational Problems Can Result
At the Western Region Asian Pacific Agency, a social services agency based in Westchester, counselors say the strain of using children to decode immigration and welfare paperwork exacerbates other stresses and sometimes leads to child abuse.
“It disrupts the traditional family structure in terms of parents providing that authority figure,” said Nancy Au, the agency’s executive director. “A lot of the children don’t view their parents as role models and there is a lack of respect. The parents are totally frustrated. . . . They want to exert some kind of control and resort to corporal punishment.”
In one case, a student explained to his mother that the Ds and Fs on his report card stood for “diligent” and “fine,” Au said. Such deceit illustrates that many children have given up expecting needed support and oversight from their parents, she said. “They feel more vulnerability.”
The agency attempts to relieve some of the pressures on these families by providing a bilingual case worker who can accompany them to schools and government offices. In addition, counselors try to create opportunities for children to see parents as resourceful and skilled. Adults work as tutors in the agency’s Cambodian language school, and counselors discuss with children what their refugee parents went through to bring the family to safety.
Similarly concerned about family pressures, the Alhambra school district, where more than 30 languages are spoken by students, began five years ago to discourage the practice of allowing children to interpret for their parents.
The district hired 20 school community coordinators who are fluent in Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin and Vietnamese. They help during parent-teacher conferences, and are available for families to contact with questions and concerns.
I don’t want to put our children in that situation,” said Quoc Tran, district program coordinator for all limited English proficient, or LEP, services.
Hospitals and medical-service providers are concerned that children may inaccurately explain medical terminology, or be placed in the uncomfortable position of detailing their parents’ symptoms. Kaiser Permanente’s California system four years ago installed Spanish- and Cantonese-language appointment phone lines and staffed hospitals with bilingual nurses and doctors. Kaiser is now moving to establish a center to translate materials for patients who speak different languages. When no one is available to interpret, doctors and nurses are instructed to use a language line operated by AT&T; to communicate with their patients, said Jean Gilbert, Kaiser’s director of cultural competence.
Doctors Concerned About Translations
At the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, where a third of the patients are now Spanish speakers, doctors became concerned that they were often relying on children--the patients themselves or their siblings--to interpret complicated medical diagnoses. In response, the hospital started a translation services department five years ago and now has three full-time translators on call to assist doctors and nurses. In addition, the medical center tests employees for the fluency in other languages and gives a bonus to those who pass.
“One should not expect children to translate medical information to other family members,” said Katherine Lipsky, director of social work for the medical center. “Ask a kid to explain to his mom he has cancer. It’s too emotionally laden.”
On one recent Saturday morning, Jessica Ramirez helped her mother check ingredients and prices at a grocery store a few blocks from their house.
Then she spotted her friend Monica coming into the store.
“Monica!” she called, and ran toward her.
“Jessica, I need you,” her mother called after her. “Come back here!”
Jessica nodded as she skipped off. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
Finally, she dashed back to her mother’s cart. But as they shopped, she kept trotting off to find her friend. They giggled and ran up and down the aisles.
At the register, the cashier told Dolores Ramirez to press the green button to approve her credit card purchase.
“Press Enter,” the cashier said loudly in English. “You understand?”
The mother nodded, and looked toward Jessica, but the little girl was distracted, talking to her friend. She had slipped back into being 11 years old, momentarily forgetting her responsibilities as a human dictionary.
Alone, the mother paused for a moment, uncertain.
“Si,” she finally responded, hoping she was getting it right. “Si.”