Tennessee Voices, Episode 261: Diana Sanchez-Vega, interpreter trainer in education and health care
Translation and interpretation of one language to another are not the same thing.
The former is about the written word while the latter is about the spoken word.
Both can be incredible difficult because English doesn't neatly translate, pardon the pun, into other languages, and often times there are cultural and regional differences that can make for embarrassing errors.
Diana Sanchez-Vega, founder and CEO of Sanchez-Vega Communications, trains interpreters in the fields of health care and education.
This is especially important to help people, who are not English-dominant, to express accurately important messages that may affect the state of their health or their children's future.
On this episode of the Tennessee Voices video podcast, Sanchez-Vega, who is Argentinian, spoke about the art and science of interpreting, how to teach it and how to avoid pitfalls.
She entered this line of work because she wanted to "monetize the true value of bilingualism."
Too often, people might think it is easy to work with two languages, but it requires talent, training and skill.
As the foreign-born population of Tennessee increases, interpreting is work that helps improve somebody's quality of life, and maybe save it too.
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The Tennessee Voices videocast is a 20-minute program, which started in March 2020 and invites leaders, thinkers and innovators who have written guest columns for a USA TODAY Network Tennessee publication to share their insights and wisdom with me and our viewers.
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David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee and an editorial board member of The Tennessean. Tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Voices: Training interpreters with Diana Sanchez-Vega
