For this semester, Hector Garza, assistant professor of spanish, decided to turn his senior-level class, “Selected Studies in Spanish”, into “Introduction to Spanish Translation.” In this class, the students were given the job to find people who needed their help with translating their documents and other materials into Spanish.
“There was this need in the Hispanic communities of Canyon and Amarillo, and I thought my students could help,” Garza said.
To get their grades in the class, students would tell Garza who they would be working for, translate their given materials and give the translated materials to Garza for proofreading. As to whom the students could work for, Garza made sure to lay down ground rules. One, if the student worked for an organization, it had to be nonprofit and community-oriented; translating for schools also fell in this category. Second, the student could not work for a company or any entity that should be able to hire professional translators.
“The point of the class is for the students to get out there and support the local organizations,” Garza said.
Rather than being deterred or intimidated by this, most students, including Diana Coronado, a senior who will be receiving her B.A. in Spanish this May, were excited by the new challenge. For her assignments, Coronado has been working at Stanton Special Programs Center, which functions as a high school, junior high and learning center in Hereford. Her main assignments have been helping in translating documents like handouts for parents. These materials contain school hours, special occasions and other items.
“I saw the need for it [performing the translations] from reading other Spanish translations and seeing words that didn’t make a lot of sense,” Coronado said.
When asked about Coronado’s performance, Stanton’s Principal Susan Robbins said that, while she had plenty of people on her staff who knew Spanish, Coronado has quickly become their go-to person for any problems that the school staff runs into when translating.
“I just wish I could hire her full-time,” Principal Robbins said.
