School Interpreters' Goal: Being Word Perfect

How do you say "spaghetti straps" in Spanish?

To find the answer, translator Ron Koff paged through a mini-dictionary used by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

He found a few offerings for baggy pants: \o7pantalones abombachados, anchos, sueltos, flojos, guangos\f7.

He found halter top: \o7blusa con espalda al descubierto.\f7

But no spaghetti straps.

Such are the challenges faced by Koff and others in the district's Translations Unit, charged with helping parents understand just about everything -- district governance, graduation requirements, the dress code.

The unit, which was created in 1992, has 19 full-time translators and interpreters and draws upon part-timers who help out during evenings, weekends and large events.

Every so often, they run across a puzzler like spaghetti straps.

"When I can't seem to make it sound right, it's just one of those days when you just can't seem to do anything right," Koff said. "Then it's very frustrating."

Though the English/Spanish Glossary of LAUSD Terminology didn't address spaghetti straps, a colleague left a note suggesting \o7blusas con tirantes delgados.\f7

The majority of the unit's staff works in Spanish, but administrators and teachers can also seek services in Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian and Armenian. Thanks to a few multilingual interpreters, schools can get help in Polish, Hebrew, Taiwanese and even Swedish.

All hands were on deck this month for the 10th annual Parent Summit, which about 2,500 parents and guardians attended.

In contrast to the Spanish interpreters who provided translation to parents wearing headsets, part-time interpreters Jenny Lew and Calvin Chen worked directly with a three-person group of Chinese parents.

Lew and Chen did double duty during a seminar on math and science. While Chen interpreted the speaker's questions to parents on what they knew about avian flu, Lew translated a packet of materials explaining how scientists use petri dishes to study bacteria and viruses.

"It's always discriminating whenever they have materials, because it's always in English and Spanish," Lew said. "They never have other languages."

The Translations Unit staff blames lack of personnel and a limited budget for situations such as these.

Last school year, the unit received 7,488 translation and interpretation requests. More than a third of the requests were denied -- a situation created by a lack of resources, said director Tony Arias.