Imagine coming into class every day, only to find you don’t understand the language the teacher is speaking. Students speak a variety of languages other than English, and for many White Station High School students, their first language is Spanish. This year, many JROTC cadets don’t speak English. As a result, teachers may ask upperclassmen to act as translators for them in JROTC and other classes.
“Sometimes … a teacher will know that I do speak Spanish, and they’ll randomly send me a message like, ‘Hey, could you like, stop by during this time and help me out? This particular student doesn’t know [English], can you go translate?’ and just stuff like that,” Brissia Gallegos (12) said.
Students like Gallegos, Daisy Romo-Murillo (12) and Pamela Murillo (12) speak both Spanish and English. Having learned these languages before coming to White Station High School, they are able to serve as translators for other students like Victoria Torres (11), Francisco Basilio (9) and Lluvia González (12), who speak little to no English.
“I learned [Spanish] from my household,” Gallegos said. “I do come from a Latino background, so I learned Spanish at home. Spanish was my first language. [My family speaks] only Spanish.”
The translators assist students throughout the school day. They may explain a teacher’s directions or help with an assignment, and they may also teach other students basic English phrases like commands for marching in JROTC.
“We’ve been translating for [Lluvia González] since last year,” Daisy Romo-Murillo (12) said. “We kinda always had … someone who doesn’t speak English that … speaks Spanish. We kinda always just help them; the teacher puts us around them. Sometimes, throughout the day, we’ll get messages from [Gonzalez and Basilio] that they need help.”
Being a translator is not without its difficulties. Translators take time away from their classwork to help other students and must finish their own work later. However, translators are not all-knowing; it may be difficult to translate certain words or phrases.
“Sometimes there’s words, especially like big words that we definitely get confused on how to translate them like … they could be in English [and] we don’t know how to … translate them to Spanish or they could be in Spanish where we don’t know the meaning in English,” Murillo said. “Also with ROTC specifically it’s a little more difficult translating because we have other leaders helping us … it gets jumbled up sometimes. And then there’s a lot of movement that we gotta do … we had to help out with basic movements, with marching … we had to do kinda like double the work with that.”
Nonetheless, being able to help other students can leave translators with a sense of fulfillment. Speaking two languages is not something everyone can do, and translators have the honor of helping other students succeed in classes they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
“First of all, that feeling of knowing that I’m able to help someone in a difficult situation — because obviously you can’t learn a language from one day to another — it’s something that I can easily help someone out with,” Gallegos said. “Also … it helps me practice the language so I don’t forget it or just … learn more vocabulary as the day goes on, as different topics arise.”
