Interpreters

The international phone line connecting a downtown Los Angeles courtroom to a cellphone 1,500 miles away in Texcoco, Mexico, was repeatedly disconnected and difficult to hear at times. But on that line hung the constitutional rights of Candido Ortiz, accused of drunkenly stabbing a man with a broken beer bottle and charged with attempted murder. Ortiz, 20, spoke only a variant of Mixe, a language used by about 7,000 people in the mountains of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Maribel Pantoja sat nervously on an examination table, awaiting word from her doctor about a painful wound on her left leg. Because she speaks only Spanish, there is usually an added level of anxiety when she visits a clinic. But a new first-in-the-nation state law requiring health insurers to provide interpreters for members with limited English skills spared Pantoja the confusion of trying to communicate with her doctor Tuesday.

Ghost is as mysterious as his name suggests. Every 45 days, he slips away from his job and heads home for a two-week break. Once there, he remains inside. He does not visit friends, take walks, go on dates, or do any of the things that would be expected of a handsome 27-year-old. He sees only his parents and siblings, because they are the only people who know that during his long stretches away, Ghost works as an interpreter for the U.S. Army.

Maria Falcon believes she lost title to a Los Angeles house in a recent court dispute for one simple reason: She cannot speak English. "I felt frustrated because I didn't have any assistance," said Falcon, 52, who speaks Spanish. Falcon said an English-speaking friend accompanied her to court but wasn't allowed to translate because she wasn't a court-certified interpreter. "I didn't understand anything going on in court.

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.

Elections officials have put out a call for 700 more people to serve as poll workers in next Tuesday's general election. Officials are especially interested in recruiting more bilingual poll workers, saying they have a particular need for those who speak Vietnamese or Korean. Poll workers, who must be available from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on election day, will be paid $80, and will receive an additional $25 for attending a training session.

SOLDIERS of the U.S. Army's Tomahawk Battalion had found witnesses to a mass kidnapping and killing that probably involved Iraqi police officers, but to get Iraqis to talk they would need a guide. They turned to a man who, until two years ago, had been running a pizza franchise in Canada. When he saw an ad in a Detroit newspaper seeking interpreters for the U.S.

When he heard the snap of a speeding baseball crashing into Hiroki Kuroda's skull, his knees buckled on the dugout steps. Once he recovered, he sprinted to the mound, kneeling near the Dodgers pitcher, who lay in a heap. "Hiroki, turn over," said the interpreter, a former Spanish teacher named Kenji Nimura who was born in Japan and raised in Los Angeles. For two seasons he has been the pitcher's steady hand, a linguistic link between America and Japan. "Hiroki, do you feel nauseous?"

No one can read our thoughts, for now, but some scientists believe they can at least figure out in what language we do our thinking. Before we utter a single word, experts can determine our mother tongue and our level of proficiency in other languages by analyzing brain activity as we read, scientists working with Italy's National Research Council say. For more than a year, a team of scientists experimented on 15 interpreters, revealing what they...

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the recipients of its second annual Opera Honors. Composer John Adams, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, director Frank Corsaro, conductor Julius Rudel and general director Lotfi Mansouri are this year's winners. Each recipient will receive a grant of $25,000 at an award ceremony to take place in November in Washington. The award is intended to "honor those visionary creators, extraordinary performers and other interpreters who have made a lasting impact on our national cultural landscape," according to the NEA. -- David Ng