Last week, I spoke at career day at my son’s elementary school. Making my experience as “CEO of a language access company” even the tiniest bit compelling for 10-12 year-olds presented one of the most challenging speaking engagements of my career.
How could I possibly make education translation as interesting to the kids as what the chocolate shop owner, news anchor, orthopedic surgeon, or fire chief had to offer? Aside from speaking about easy-to-understand (while very difficult to do) jobs, these parents came with stickers, treats, and take-home stethoscopes in hand.
Then, I realized I didn’t need a fancy uniform to be relatable. I didn’t need to explain the usefulness and limitations of Google Translate (they already knew). I could talk about how education translation helps their friends and their parents… and I could demonstrate it from my phone.
Making everyday interaction possible from an app?
That is something kids definitely get and even think is cool.
My key message about education translation:
This made sense to them. This resonated. I wasn’t surprised how many hands shot up when I asked the kids if they knew someone who was born in another country or speaks a different language.
I live in the Washington, DC area. Our proximity to the nation’s capital gives students a unique opportunity to meet kids and families coming to town because a parent is serving at an embassy or in a foreign delegation.
As a result, my boys have friends from around the world, including Germany, Chile, Korea, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil, China, and Japan. And that’s just within our house. International night at their school is one of the most well-attended and beloved programs of the year with the parade of nations typically including dozens of countries.
Since kids learn best through doing and seeing, I pulled up the Alboum interpretation app on the Promethean board. I had a student volunteer join me in each class and demonstrate how AI interpretation, OPI, and VRI all worked, testing Spanish, Japanese, ASL, Chinese, and Russian.
We talked about how these tools make actively participating in the school community possible for students and their parents alike. The kids and teachers volunteered examples of situations that education translation and interpretation would have made easier:
- a 5th grade bus patrol who had a hard time telling a new, younger student why standing in the aisle wasn’t allowed
- a teacher who struggled because she needed to contact a parent from Argentina and the only bilingual staff member available learned Spanish while studying abroad in Spain
- a 3rd grade student who had to translate his report card into Urdu for his parents.
While I went to career day to share information with kids about jobs in language services, I think the kids and I both ended the day equally excited about the opportunities in and difference our industry can make.
Career Day is the day before spring break in my son’s school. Which remarkably means we’re heading into the home stretch of the school year. If your school or district is planning for the 26-27 school year, here are links to more detail on some of Alboum’s education translation services:
- Budgeting for Translation and Interpretation
- IEP Translation
- Emergency Message Translation – get ahead of next year’s Snowcrete!
- Translating (and Updating) Handbooks and Codes of Conduct
- ASL Interpretation for Parent-Teacher Conferences, IEP and ARD Meetings
- Curriculum Translation
As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or to get set up so you’re ready to go on day 1 in the fall. And if you need a speaker for Career Day in your district, we’re here for that too!
