Translator

The May 24 Column One story gives a poignant voice to so many young, unheard “language brokers,” an expression I’d not heard before but which seems so apt. I share Jessica’s ambivalence about a role thrust upon her, a burden which adults should never put upon a child. I was the eldest child of deaf parents in the ‘50s. In that pre-ADA era, I too was coerced to be an unwilling translator and was privy to adult concepts and issues long before I had the intellectual or emotional development to deal appropriately with the information. Kudos to the schools that recognize how wrong it is to have children serve as their parents’ interpreters.

In the case of my parents, they could not learn to hear in order to assimilate better into the world. In the case of Jessica’s parents, it was their decision to bear children and it was their decision to live in an English-speaking community. It should thus be their decision--and responsibility--to make the effort to learn to speak the language that will let them fully function as parents in America.

PAM SCHULZ

Culver City