Speaker 1: Being a social worker is for sure your calling. How many times have you dreamed of being there for this child, but how many times have you been totally drained, especially after meeting with a mad parent, especially if the parent has a limited English proficiency? I'm Maggie, I'm the co-founder of Taika Translations, we're a translation and interpretation company. Today I want to tell you a small story. There was a meeting of a social worker with a father of a Chinese girl. They just immigrated to the United States, it was their first year in the school, and after the first semester, the teacher could feel that the girl is not doing as well as she could. So the meeting with the social worker was arranged. A dad came, he was already frustrated as he came to the meeting. As the meeting was going on, he was just getting more and more frustrated. The main point of frustration was mathematics. The girl did really fine in arts, she did fine in language, she was actually doing pretty fine with English as well, but the math, she just couldn't get the concepts. The father, he was just fuming, I mean, he was switching to some bad words, and praise God the social worker actually couldn't understand them because the meeting had interpreter. Well interpreter was trying to make it a little bit softer than the father was actually talking. Well it was going on for about an hour, and just felt like there was no great progress. The father was frustrated, there was no great solution, and the social worker, she just kept on saying that the girl is doing great, maybe she just needs a little bit of additional help with math, but otherwise she is doing really well, so you should be proud of her. Well as the meeting was concluded, and as the meeting was rescheduled to have a review in a couple of months, we just stayed there, and the interpreter actually spoke a little bit about the culture of the dad, as he knew the area where they are from really well. He said that for them, math is just a lot more important than just a subject. It could not compare with arts in any way, so being bad at math is just like shameful for the whole family, so that's why it was that important. And the education in general in China is more shame driven, or let's say you just really want to please your parents, and that's your main motivation. It's completely different from the American mindset. So why am I telling this? Just because the role of the interpreter in the meeting can be a lot more than just a Google Translate type thing, where you just put the words, and the interpreter just repeats the same words. Of course, in some applications that's exactly like that. If we are in the surgery, if it's a medical appointment, if it's a court case, of course you want to make sure that every single word, every single intonation is there. However, in the school application, it can be a little bit different. So do you need to hear all those bad words? Well, maybe not. So maybe it's fine for the interpreter to make it a little bit softer for the social workers' ears. The other thing is that the interpreter does have this cultural background. So if you need this little bit of the insight on the culture of those people, of their background, what they came from, what histories they lived through, it's just a good idea to ask the interpreter to actually tell a little bit about it from the inside. Of course, we can all read it on Google. Of course, we can all look on Wikipedia and understand what was happening in this region. But it's completely different than if we listen to somebody who is actually from there and knows that area well and knows their beliefs, their values, their traditions. So just use it. I mean, you can ask the interpreter some questions. Don't feel like he's just or she's just there only to interpret the meeting. We can come to the meeting earlier. You know, you can already ask those background questions and be more prepared for the meeting. And if there is a need, if there is a completely new family in your school and you have never met this culture before, well, it would be fine just to set up a meeting just to talk about this place. So we will find you or match you exactly with the people from that area so they can help you understand their needs better. As we all together, we want to make sure that the child succeeds, the family succeeds, and the community as a whole succeeds.