I HAVE FOUND A MENTOR!!! :D

        At long last and almost at the last possible second, I have found a mentor, thank God. Her name is Anne Guzman and she owns her own company, Guzman Translation and Interpreting. I met her for the first time last Wednesday at a community budget meeting she was interpreting for in Long Beach. These types of community meetings are the events she interprets at most often. I'm happy that it will work out for me to shadow her when she has events come up.
        This past Saturday was my first official day of mentorship (yay!). I went to a Building Healthy Communities event at Stevenson Elementary School in Long Beach. My mentor, Anne, interpreted for an info session that was part of the event. I listened to both the English presenter and the Spanish interpretation by my mentor. It turned out that she had to do both simultaneous AND consecutive, which was really cool to see.

Stevenson Elementary School

This is the equipment that is used for simultaneous interpreting, which I helped set up. We put it on a table near the door so anyone who needed Spanish interpretation could pick one up. Each pair of headphones is plugged into a receiver (the little boxes), which gets a signal from the transmitter plugged into the interpreter's microphone. Both the transmitter and receiver have to be turned to the same channel, so it's a little like a one-way walkie talkie.

This was the presentation stage in the school auditorium. There were a couple of videos throughout, which had to be interpreted as well. 

Here is my mentor interpreting for the person speaking on the stage. You can see her microphone in the picture. The people wearing headphones, like me, hear everything she says. I lowered the volume on my receiver because I wanted to hear both English and Spanish.

It was really cool that I got to see two different types of interpretation! The lady on the right wanted to give her portion of the presentation in Spanish, and since the English speakers in the audience didn't have headphones, Anne had to interpret using the consecutive method. First the presenter spoke for a little bit while Anne took notes (left picture), and then Anne interpreted what had been said by the speaker into English using the notes she had taken to help her (right picture).

I loved shadowing Anne on Saturday and I'm super excited to continue my mentorship with her and learn more about interpreting! All my waiting and hoping for a mentorship has paid off and I'm ready to take on the rest of my senior project. :D

Blog 6: Second Interview Preparation (Finally!)

1. Who is your mentor and where do they work?
        My mentor is Anne Guzman. She is a English/Spanish interpreter and owns Guzman Translation and Interpreting.

2. What five questions will you ask them about their background?

• What first inspired you to become an interpreter?
• How long have you been interpreting professionally?
• What type of interpretation do you focus on?
• How many languages do you interpret in? How did you learn them?
• In what different settings/fields have you worked and what have you learned from each?
• What interpreter training, if any, have you received? Where did you receive it?
• What is the history of your company? 

Blog 8: Research and Working Essential Question

1. What is your working EQ?
        What is the best way for an interpreter to facilitate understanding between two people who do not speak the same language?
        
2. What is a possible answer to your working EQ? (In thesis format)
        An interpreter must have a clear understanding of how both languages being spoken relate to their respective cultures in order to best facilitate understanding.

3. What is the most important source you have used that has helped you come up with an answer to your working EQ?
        The source that has most helped me come up with this answer to my essential question is titled "Plain Language for Interpreting in Consulting Rooms". This article was written by a language professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. A large portion of it focuses on the relationship between language and culture because South Africa has an extremely culturally diverse population and 11 official languages. Although this article only uses the example of interpretation in a healthcare setting, I believe that the points it bring up about the importance of understanding how language is part of a culture and not a separate entity are relevant to all areas in which interpretation is used.

4. Who is your mentor or where are you doing your mentorship, and how does what you are doing relate to your working EQ?
        I do not yet have a mentor.

Blog 7: Independent Component 1 Approval

1. Describe in detail what you plan to do for 30 hours.
        My 30 hours will come from a combination of both my Spanish and Chinese classes. I attend Chinese for five hours per week and Spanish for four hours per week. This is a total of nine hours per week, and, assuming my component gets approved and I continue logging hours until both classes end in December, I will have a total of approximately 180 hours. This time will be spent participating in class, completing assignments such as presentations, classwork, projects, and tests, and interacting with my professors and other students in the classes.
        In my Chinese class, which is at Citrus College, we practice speaking in Chinese through little dialogues from the textbook or short presentations using the vocabulary in the lesson. We also practice character reading, writing, recognition, and translation. Sometimes we play a game or do an activity to get more familiar with the characters and grammar concepts we are learning that week. There is usually a quiz once every two weeks or so. I can't believe how much Chinese I have learned in these past six weeks of being in the class.
        I am taking Spanish at Cal Poly Pomona. Since I have only attended one class so far, I'm not sure yet what specifically I will be doing in there. However, the entire class is taught in Spanish (technically it's a class for native Spanish speakers), so I have no doubt that my Spanish will be greatly improved by my attending the class.

2. Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
        To show at least 30 hours of evidence, I will save all assignments, homework, projects, etc. that I complete for each class and select pictures of some of them to put on my blog. I will also post a video of any oral presentations I do for either class and pictures of the classes themselves. I will have a total of 10 weeks worth of work to show for both classes, so I should have enough tangible evidence, of which I can post digital copies, to add up to 30 hours. Also, I will have made progress in my ability to speak, read, and write in Spanish and Chinese outside of the classroom. This is something I won't really be able to post on my blog, but I can show it in person.

3. Explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic more in depth.
        My independent component really is laying a foundation for my entire project and topic in general. It is impossible to become an interpreter without fluency in at least two languages. So, since my success as an interpreter hinges on me achieving fluency in the languages I have chosen to focus on, taking these classes is very important to my topic and the further development of my project. Even though my independent component will not deal with interpretation expressly, it will ultimately allow me to go deeper into the topic as I (hopefully soon!) start a mentorship in interpretation and continue to pursue it as my career.

4. Update your senior project hours log.
        Done. :D

The Struggle Continues...

        Welcome to my third blog post in a row about my inability to find a mentor for my project. Since my last post, I have continued to knock on the doors of possible mentorships and they have all been opened a crack and then slammed in my face. I can honestly say that I have been doing everything I can to find a mentorship, but nothing has come through yet.
        It did not work out for me to mentor with my first interviewee because of confidentiality issues. I did find another possible opportunity with an interpreter at Parents' Place, a parents resource center, last weekend. It looked like it would be a good fit, but every event she would be interpreting for that I could shadow at is during school hours. I emailed her again to see if there were any others, and now she is not getting back to me. Currently, I am looking at any options that might be available with LACOE interpreters with the help of Mrs. Ortega, my English teacher. Today my dad emailed two contacts he has who might know of something I could pursue, and I asked Mrs. Bazaldua at IPoly if she knew of anyone in interpretation.
        And so my grueling search for a mentor continues. Exasperated, discouraged, and impotent are some pretty good words to describe how I am feeling about this right now. It is very stressful, and, like I said in an earlier post, I feel that I cannot fully commit myself to my project and move on with it until I have my mentorship nailed down. For example, I have not thought about Independent Component 1 at all because I have been so consumed with finding a mentor. Also, since I do not know what field of interpretation my mentorship will be in (at this point the field or type does not matter to me), I have been unable to focus my research and instead am reading articles on all different types of interpretation and fields in which it is used. Because of this it often seems to me that I am wasting time reading very long, tedious articles that may or not be relevant to my project, but I have no way of determining this at the moment. I hate that senior project has barely started and I am already having major difficulties which I feel are out of my control.
        Well, that's basically all I have to say. The only thing I can do is keep chasing any possibilities that come up and keep praying and hoping that I find something soon.

Here is a kinda-funny comic to lighten up this depressing post. :)

Mentorship Difficulites

        I know this post is supposed to be identifying my mentor and listing five questions I will be asking them to establish them as an expert in the field of interpretation. However, I have been unable to find someone who can mentor me. I have been working on this for about a month. I had hoped that I would find a mentorship by today so I could post Blog 6, but obviously that didn't happen. I honestly did everything possible in order to get one by the Blog 6 post date. The following is a list of everything I have tried. I haven't yet given up hope that I will find one at all, it's just taking longer than ideal.

• Talked to the head clerk and the interpreters' office at the Pomona Courthouse. Not possible because of court regulations.
• Talked to the supervisor at the center for interpreters at the Los Angeles Superior Court. Also not possible because of court regulations.
• Called multiple interpreters from the listing of all certified interpreters for courthouses. Not possible.
• Talked to the head nurse at Foothill Presbyterian Hospital. Not possible because they no longer use in-person interpreters due to the installation of a new phone system that does the interpreting.
• Talked to a doctor and board member at the Pomona Valley Hospital. Not possible due to HIPAA rules.
• Asked a Department of Children and Family Services social worker for possible opportunities. There are none.
• Asked the woman I interviewed if she would be able to mentor me where she interprets at the Family Center in Covina. No response yet.
• Called several interpreter service companies. Waiting for replies.
• Contacted Karen Rusikoff at Cal Poly. She does not know any interpreters.

Next, I plan to contact more local interpreting agencies to see if they allow job shadowing, as well as follow up with my first interviewee. I also asked my Chinese professor today if she knew any interpreters, and she gave me a couple of ideas of who to contact. Hopefully something comes through soon.

Blog 5: Mentorship and Research Reflection

Based on what you have done for your senior project so far, answer the following questions. Be specific and use examples.

1. Mentorship Question: Describe your experience in how you found your mentorship. If you haven't found one yet, describe your experience so far in the search for a mentor.
        Unfortunately, I am still working on finding a mentor. The thing is that the number of contacts I have who are currently working as interpreters is ZERO. Someone I know from my church who used to be an interpreter put me in touch with my interviewee, who was very helpful and whom I liked very much. However she cannot mentor me because she interprets for therapy sessions at a family center, and due to the confidential nature of these sessions, I would not be able to shadow her. In the interview I asked her if she knew any other interpreters I could talk to, and she said no.
        This past Friday I also contacted a social worker friend of my family who works in the foster care system and who often interacts with court interpreters to see if she knew of anyone who would be willing to mentor me. She did not reply, but I'm going to follow up with her. However, she is very slow at replying to any form of communication so I'm honestly not sure if I can get ahold of her before the find-a-mentor deadline.
        Really the only sort-of lead I have at the moment is through a family friend who works for corporate Taco Bell. My dad emailed him to see if they use interpreters in any areas of their business. As of tonight he had not replied with any information.
        It frustrates me that the only potential mentorship contacts I have are friends of friends of friends of friends who I have never met or even heard of. This makes me a little nervous about whether they would make good mentors, assuming they are willing and able to. I currently feel like I am/will be treading water on my project until I find a mentorship. Every day and week that goes by I get more nervous about not having a mentor yet. I hope I find one soon so I can stop thinking about it and get on with my project.

2. Research Question: What has been the most important article you have read so far and why?
        The most important article I have read so far is entitled "Interpreting China, Interpreting Chinese" by Robin Setton. Chinese is one of the languages I am plan to someday interpret in, and I learned some fascinating things about Chinese interpretation from this article. I chose it as most important because it deals with a specific area of my topic that I know will be of great importance to me in my career.
        The interpretation field in China has grown a ton in recent times because of China's "spectacular re-engagement with the world" as the article puts it. Also, the writer described how interpreter training in China is undergoing some changes to adapt to the great demand. However, in China, interpreter training and straight English proficiency are sometimes used interchangeably or confused with each other. The article also talked about cultural differences between English and Chinese and how, if an interpreter is not aware of the language culturally, they have the potential to make some offensive mistakes without meaning to. The information in this article gave me a greater understanding of the atmosphere I will be dealing with as I progress into the interpretation world. Another fact I learned: Only two percent of Chinese language interpreters are not native speakers!