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Children as Medical Interpreters
According to the 2000 U.S. census, around 45 million people speak a language other than English in the home. That means, when someone in one of those homes gets sick, or even just wants a medical check up, often a translator is needed to make sense of what doctors are saying. In California, there are regulations that require HMO’s to cover the cost of translators, but the state government has trouble enforcing these laws. So very often, children and teenagers end up translating for their parents.
Youth Radio’s Antony Jauregui knows what that’s like:
I’ll never forget this one time when someone in my family was in the hospital. All of the sudden, my mom’ s like, “You have to translate.” But what the doctor said confused me. And all my family kept saying was, “Are you sure? Did they really say that?”
In 2006, the California Senate considered a bill that would ban young people from translating in all medical situations, including hospitals, clinics, and even private doctor’s offices. The bill’s author, Assemblyman Leland Yee, says using children as translators is poor medical practice. But some parents prefer to communicate through their children, and even when they’d like an interpreter, often one is not available, especially in emergency situations.
From Youth Radio’s LA bureau, Antony Jauregui reports on the issues and controversies surrounding the use of children as medical interpreters.
Click here to find the full script and audio for this story.
Teach Youth Radio
For this month's feature, you will be able to view these strategies and resources:
1. How teachers can align this Youth Radio story to National Standards in the classroom.
2. Suggestions for lesson plans that link the story's content to your classroom's themes and subject areas.
3. Suggestions for lesson plans that explore media literacy, using the story to re-read mainstream media.
4. Bios of the Youth Radio reporters who produced the story.
5. A list of resources and further research related to the story's themes.
6. Links to Youth Radio’s media production techniques as guides and inspiration for your students’ creative media-making projects.
1. NATIONAL STANDARDS: Standards Alignment
Subject: LANGUAGE ARTS
NL-ENG.K-12.1 READING FOR PERSPECTIVE
NL-ENG.K-12.2 UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
NL-ENG.K-12.3 EVALUATION STRATEGIES
NL-ENG.K-12.6 APPLYING KNOWLEDGE
NL-ENG.K-12.9 MULTICULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
Subject: HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.1 HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION
NPH-H.9-12.2 HEALTH INFORMATION, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
NPH-H.9-12.3 REDUCING HEALTH RISKS
NPH-H.9-12.4 INFLUENCES ON HEALTH
NPH-H.9-12.7 HEALTH ADVOCACY
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2. NEWS YOU CAN USE: Story content in your classroom, Suggestions for lesson plans
Language Arts:
Reading for Perspective:
Youth Radio’s Antony Jauregui has direct personal experience translating for his family in medical situations, and that’s part of what drew him to covering this story. But he touches on a range of perspectives here, from medical and policy professionals to patients and teen translators. Have your students identify the various voices that appear in this piece, and identify how they establish their authority over the subject being discussed. Which perspectives stand out as most convincing? Why? What do your choices tell you about the strongest ways to make a case about a policy issue you want to sway?
Tools for Translation: A doctor in Antony’s story describes a difficult scene, where she has to pass the phone back and forth to get a translator for patients in “horrible horrible pain” in the emergency room. Have students free-write about a moment when they’ve had to translate for someone they love. Encourage them not to limit themselves to language in a literal sense—perhaps they have translated between generations, genders, or cultural contexts. What tools have they used to convey their meanings? How useful or imperfect were those tools? How high were the stakes? How well were they able to translate from one “language” (or world view) to another?
Cultural Meanings: Sometimes translation in a medical setting isn’t only about bridging two different languages. Patients and their families bring their own beliefs and practices surrounding disease, diagnosis, treatment, and health, which don’t always match the “medical model.” Have students interview an elder in their community about their experiences with medical doctors. What assumptions have they brought as patients? What assumptions have they sensed from doctors? What happens when those assumptions collide rather than coincide?
Translation Continued: Dealing with a medical condition requires a whole lot of storytelling, so the translation might start in a hospital or doctor’s office, but it doesn’t end there. Once you’ve been diagnosed with a medical condition, you then need to be able to explain what you’re going through, what you “have,” and what you need, to other people in your life, including family members, teachers, and even employers. Assign students working in small groups to various medical conditions. Have them research the condition they’re given (e.g., symptoms, treatment options, causes…), and then ask them to act out a scene at a family gathering or workplace where they have to explain their condition, with other students acting out the other parts. Debrief with a discussion of the moments of miscommunication they noticed in the various scenes, reflecting on the relationship between medicine, science, language, and culture.
Health::
Pushing Legislation: One of the people Antony features in his story is Leland Yee, the California State Assemblyman who sponsored the bill aimed to ban children as medical interpreters. The bill is called AB755. Have students do some research to identify the key policy arguments for and against the bill, and have them find out the present status of the bill in California, as well as whether similar legislation exists anywhere else in the United States. How can young people who feel passionately about this specific health proposal influence state and federal policy makers?
Resources: The final words of Antony’s report are troubling: “If the new law passes, Susanna would be in a tough spot. Her daughter wouldn’t be able to interpret for her anymore, but the clinic wouldn’t be required to find someone else who could.” Have students identify health care providers in their community, and find out what provisions are made for patients who speak minimal or no English. What are the pros and cons of a ban on children acting as medical interpreters for their families? Which side of the debate do you support?
Mental Health: Assemblyman Leland Lee cites the anxiety he experienced when he knew he’d have to translate for family members. But at the end of the story, Susanna says her translations actually relieve her mother’s anxiety, because they “understand each other” in ways a stranger would not. These contrasting experiences point to the mental health issues that medical problems can raise. Have students do some research to find out what mental health supports are and should be available to non-English speaking patients.
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3. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY: Putting This Story in Context
Policy-Makers Get Personal: Antony has a clip from Assemblyman Lee, the man sponsoring the AB755 bill, reflecting on his own experience as a child translating for his mother in a medical setting: “Well, I was always rather nervous when I was translating for my mother. You know the guilt and the anxiety that you feel...whether or not you do the right thing-- did you translate accurately, did you harm your mother, did you do anything wrong that might make your mother a little bit sicker than she should be?” How common is it, in mainstream news coverage, for politicians to draw on their own family histories in an effort to build public support? What are some other examples when you’ve noticed this technique cited in the news? How does it affect your thinking about the issue under debate? Is it ever inappropriate, in your view, for public figures to base decisions on their personal experiences?
Establishing Expertise: This story is interesting in that it spotlights an aspect of medicine in which young people hold a linguistic expertise that many doctors do not have. How are medical professionals typically portrayed in the media—All-knowing? Arrogant? Vulnerable? Compassionate? Have students identify examples of doctors and nurses in television shows and movies, and contrast those characters with actual medical professionals they have encountered. What explains the similarities and differences between fiction and their slice of “real life”?
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4. MEET THE COMMENTATOR
My name is Antony Jauregui, and I am a seventeen-year-old senior at Inglewood High School in Los Angeles. I’ve been a part of Youth Radio for about two years. I’m interested in communications, and that is what I plan to do when I grow up—most likely something in radio. My stories for Youth Radio include “No Sex Ed," a piece about the lack of sexual education in my high school, and “Child Translators," the story featured in this News Break. I plan to make many more stories.
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5. RESOURCES AND RESEARCH
• "Status of the California bill proposing a ban on children acting as medical interpreters"
• "Professional association for medical interpreters"
• "Public television report on the debates surrounding child interpreters"
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6. MEDIA PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES FOR LEARNING: Making Audio Narratives
Click here to link to Youth Radio's guidelines for conducting interviews, writing commentaries, and producing features.
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