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Brand the Interpreter
What if La Malinche—the Indigenous woman who famously served as interpreter and advisor to Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest of Mexico—could share her stories? Imagine the insights and experiences she could offer about the power of language and navigating the complexities of two worlds. That’s the spirit behind the Brand the Interpreter Podcast!
Hosted by Mireya Pérez, an interpreter and personal brand advocate, this podcast gives today’s interpreters a platform to share their own fascinating stories, challenges, and triumphs. Each episode pulls back the curtain on the world of interpreting, from navigating high-stakes conversations to facilitating cross-cultural understanding, offering listeners a glimpse into the lives of the professionals who bring meaning across languages.
Whether you’re an interpreter, a bilingual professional, or simply curious about the magic that happens behind the scenes, Brand the Interpreter immerses you in the stories of language professionals making an impact every day. It’s more than just a podcast—it’s a celebration of language, connection, and the vital human element that makes communication possible.
Join us to explore how the power of language, driven by human connection, shapes understanding, opens new worlds, and transforms perspectives, revealing the deeper truths that unite us all.
Brand the Interpreter
Season 7 Finale with Host Mireya Pérez
As we close out Season 7 of Brand the Interpreter, I take a moment to reflect on the challenges and triumphs of 2024. In this heartfelt finale, I share personal stories, the moments that reminded me why this podcast matters and my gratitude to all of you - listeners, guests, and supporters - who've made this journey possible.
I'll also take a look back at some of the highlights from this season, revisiting memorable moments and impactful conversations that have shaped this year. Plus, hear what's next, including upcoming Reflection Room episodes to keep the conversation going while I prepare for an exciting Season 8.
Thank you for showing up and being part of this incredible Brand the Interpreter Community!
Share your thoughts about this episode!
Thanks for tuning in, till next time! 👋
Connect with Mireya Pérez, Host
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Welcome back, branded Bunch, to the season finale of Brand the Interpreter. This episode marks the final chapter of Season 7, and, as always, I'm so grateful you're here with me today. As I look back on 2024, I realize it's been a year filled with challenges, challenges that made me question whether this project of mine would continue. I won't lie there were moments when I thought it might be best to stop publishing episodes altogether. I questioned whether this podcast was truly making a difference, but time and time again, subtle reminders would show up. For instance, in May, I met the deputy director for the Office of Civil Rights, michael Millay. When I introduced myself, he surprised me by saying I know who you are. I listen to your podcast. You should have seen my face. I think somebody somewhere has a picture of it.
Speaker 2:Actually, the podcast has also been mentioned in several self-published books, including Dr Regina Galasso's Becoming a Translator for Dummies, and I've been personally thanked by individuals who have shared how the content has helped them on their own personal journeys. I can't even begin to count the doors this podcast has opened for me. I share these examples to remind myself, and perhaps you, that even our labors of love can be difficult to navigate. Sometimes we convince ourselves that the projects or pursuits we're passionate about aren't worth the effort. But maybe the challenges we face are the universe's way of asking how deeply we believe in our own dreams. Will we keep pushing forward when things get tough, or will we give up when obstacles arise?
Speaker 2:As Brand the Interpreter approaches its fifth year, I'm reminded of something that legendary Mexican singer, vicente Fernandez, often told his audience. He'd say as long as you keep clapping, I will keep singing. In the same spirit, I say this to you as long as you keep showing up, I'll keep creating content, content that shines a light on our profession and the incredible people behind it. I want to take a moment to thank each of you listeners who've tuned in, guests who have shared your stories and everyone who has supported this podcast in one way or another. Your encouragement fuels my passion for this work.
Speaker 2:While I prepare for season eight, I'll continue publishing Reflection Room episodes to keep the conversations going. I hope you're enjoying these bite-sized episodes. I'm already brainstorming ideas for season eight and I can't wait to dive into some of the most thought-provoking stories yet. I hope you're enjoying these bite-sized episodes. I'm already brainstorming ideas for Season 8, and I can't wait to dive into some of the most thought-provoking stories yet, so stay tuned. It's going to be an exciting journey.
Speaker 2:In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what stories, themes or topics you'd like to see in Season 8, or share your reflections on past episodes. Your input helps shape the podcast and makes it even better, and if this podcast has resonated with you, please share it with others who might enjoy or benefit from it. Together we can amplify the voices in this incredible profession. And with that I bid you a temporary farewell as I close out this season and prepare for what's ahead. I hope to see you back here next year for more interpreter stories on Brand the Interpreter, where I continue sharing your stories about our profession. Thanks for tuning in and for being a part of this journey. Till next time, till next time.
Speaker 3:People always ask me what was the most difficult assignment that you had, most difficult piece that you have to translate on TV? And once during the war on Ukraine, maybe the first week or the first 10 days of war, there was a piece that was absolutely crushing, that was terrible, and I had watched that piece before because on CNN some reports go on air several times a day, as in any newscast, and so I knew what was coming. And it was a father that learned that his wife and two children had died in an explosion and he learned that seeing a picture on social media because they were trying to live, I think was Kiev, they were trying to leave the city and they were using this sort of pieces of luggage and they separated. He saw a picture of the pieces of luggage and he recognized that. And the report had pictures of this family vacationing and they were the same age, the children, the same age as my children, and the anchor. She was destroyed on TV. I had to translate her. She was destroyed, crying and crying, with the pictures and everything.
Speaker 3:And then, the first time that this report went on air, I told the editor this was devastating, this was terrible, and he said yes, and then half an hour later he said Denise, we are going to broadcast that, you have to translate it. And at the time I had a booth partner with me, renato, and I said, renato, we'll have to do that part. So I had my computer, I went to YouTube, put some cat videos a very long one. I love cat videos, they are very relaxing. And so when the piece started, I just I was listening to the report but looking at the cats and looking at cats doing some messy stuff and I was went. So I could go for that. I don't know, maybe four, five, six minutes. And when it finished I was shaking, I could not speak anymore. My throat was closed and I took five minutes coffee and half an hour later was working again. My throat was closed and I took five minutes coffee and half an hour later was working again, and that was it.
Speaker 4:This may sound counterintuitive, but I would say do what's right for you. What worked for me may not work for you. I'm a different person. You have your own talents, skills, personality, baggage, aspirations. So do what works for you.
Speaker 4:Yes, at some point along the way you want to formalize your talent, because a lot of people have latent talent. You're gifted in a particular area, but at some point you want to formalize that with some form of instruction structure that may take the form of a degree program, that may take the form of some sort of apprenticeship. So you want to. You want to back up your, your talent and your gift with something of substance, in whatever form that makes sense to you. You know, I had that opportunity gifted to me right here in my homeland. For you, it might mean traveling overseas to go, you know, to a university somewhere. It might also mean living in a foreign land to you know. Really formalize your language acquisition. Whatever it is. Do what's right for you.
Speaker 4:And I will mirror what you said, miria, in terms of telling your network. I mean, we find it so easy to tell our network what we had for breakfast this morning on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, but why not tell your network. Hey, I'm looking for opportunities in XYZ. Or hey, I'm in this country and I'd love to meet up with I don't know whoever's here. I think we have a fantastic tool that is social media that can help us connect across borders and boundaries and, again, it's up to us to how we use that tool strategically to ask for what we want. Maybe that's my last point. I am a huge fan of asking, but precisely what I want? I will ask people exactly what I want or need. The answer might be no, but then the answer might be hey, I can't help you, but I know somebody who does, and I also believe, in speaking these things into the atmosphere that somewhere, somehow, god is going to respond. Ask and you shall receive.
Speaker 1:I have observed that unfortunately, at least again in my experience it seems like more and more interpreters, especially those that are becoming certified in recent years, are willing to be paid less and less, driving the fees for all of us down. So I really that's what I became aware of. You know that in the field of interpreting there hasn't been, as it has happened in other professions perhaps, a tendency to really become aware of professionalizing the work and really not just thinking about our own payments but actually to really have a collective mindset. You know, and really being able to connect that whatever you accept today is going to impact, whether you realize it or not, others as well is going to impact, whether you realize it or not, others as well.
Speaker 1:I worked before the pandemic with a collective that no longer exists. I'm not sure why it dissolved, but it was a real school in showing me a way to set fees at a very good level, both in terms of laying out translation fees as well as interpreting fees and making a distinction between nonprofit client fees and for-profit client fees, and I have used it as a model for my own invoices and whatnot in the last few years. But essentially that's really my two cents. You know that it needs to be a better paid profession period.
Speaker 5:Realistically you're going to work with. You're probably going to work with some agencies at least, like I think it's pretty rare to meet a translator or interpreter who says that they work with zero agencies I mean some people, but I think probably you want to at least, and that then it's just a matter of going to their website and doing what they tell you to do. So go to the agency's website and they'll have a link that says like careers, join the team, freelance for us, you know opportunities. Just do what they tell you to do, but follow up three to six times. We all fantasize that we're going to submit these agency applications and, like 10 minutes later, the phone's going to ring and they're going to say oh, we have this juicy project for you. When can you start? It doesn't work that way. So I don't know where the online applications go, but you barely ever get a response to that. You're probably going to have to email them. Find people. I think hopefully everyone knows that when you go on LinkedIn, if you put the name of any company into the search box and then you click people, it'll show you every person on LinkedIn that has that company's name and their profile.
Speaker 5:So go in and what I do is connect with some of their project managers and say I applied on your website. Could you let me know what would be the next steps? You have to ask them a question, right? Don't just say like hi, I connected on your website. They'll be like great, and it ends there, right? So say, right, could you let me know the next steps? And I think with agencies, it is reasonable to nudge them until they tell you yes or no, like you don't want to do that with direct clients because you don't know if they need you and it can be aggravating, right, and you don't want to be that person who's like hi, it's me again, hi, it's me again. And they're like I would have responded if we need you and we don't. But with agencies, I do think it's fair to keep nudging them until they tell you yes or no. And like I just actually did this to a project manager yesterday that I said this is my final follow up, you know, I'm contacting you once more about the projects that we talked about. I'm contacting you once more about the projects that we talked about. I'm still very interested, but if I don't hear from you, I won't contact you again. But I think that you have to be. It feels so pushy and cringy, but agencies get so many applications that I feel like you really need to follow up until you either get a response from them or follow up at least three times. I know that sounds painful and it is. Follow up at least three times and tell them like this is the final time that I'm going to follow up. Let me know if you're interested and if I don't hear from you, I won't follow up again.
Speaker 5:Now with direct clients it's more subtle. So first of all, you have to have some sort of specialization or because you don't know who to market to Like. I know that interpreters are less specialized than translators. You know it's pretty rare to meet an interpreter who you thought I want to work with immigration law firms Like that would be, I feel like for your listeners who are court certified, that, a pretty good first step.
Speaker 5:One thing that I always tell people is, with your first round of direct clients target clients who have work that you are like I could do this in my sleep. You don't want to feel stressed by the work that they want you to do. If you've never worked with a direct client before, you know. But you want to think like you know, interpreting for immigration law firms or doing depositions so do stuff where you think I am not going to be stressed by the work but, like I've interpreted for witness testimony, like up and down in court, like I am not stressed out by you know what this work is going to consist of.
Speaker 5:And then what you want to do is let's take immigration law firms. They're really easy to find right, because law firms also belong to a million bar associations. You know you can look for immigration law associations your local bar association and then go to the law firm's website and lots of them have contact information right there and you're going to email. In a small firm, you could email the attorneys. In a bigger firm, maybe one of the paralegals or the admin people you know, like if the law like three people, just email the attorneys, you know. But if the law is like three people, just email the attorneys, you know. But if the law firm is like 300 people, the attorneys aren't going to write back to you. You need to contact maybe one of their paralegals or an admin person. The email needs to be short, 125 words or less.
Speaker 5:And here's what I would say something like if I were writing to you, I'd say you know, dear Attorney Perez, I'm a French-English interpreter. I'm a court-certified French-English interpreter in the area. I came across your website while researching immigration law firms in New York. I'm wondering if there might be a need for a French-English interpreter to interpret for your clients. Would you be the correct person to speak with about offering my freelance services? Again, don't say let me know if you need me, don't let the email just like run off into death. You know say would you be the correct person to speak with about offering my freelance services, so that hopefully they'll reply to you or say, oh, I'm copying our HR person. Or like, oh, our other, this other attorney handles our foreign language matters and they might need you.
Speaker 5:And you're probably going to have to do that 50 to 100 times before you get a client out of it.
Speaker 5:You're not going to. I mean, maybe you will email six law firms and have them, you know, come back at. Like, if you research it really carefully, maybe. But for example, I think for your listeners who are court certified, starting out with immigration law firms and also agencies that hire court reporters, I've gotten quite a bit of deposition interpreting work through agencies that hire court reporters because they have to use a court reporter for a deposition and it's usually live for whatever reason they don't do. You know? Most of court is just recorded. Now they in my experience they only use human court reporters in or at least in the Colorado courts only for high profile stuff, like if it's a motions hearing or a trial or something, you have a live court reporter, but the rest of the time they just record it. And I think that a lot of times the agency that provides the court reporter will be asked like do you have referrals to any court interpreters that we could use because we have this foreign language deposition?
Speaker 6:Well, it became quite apparent to me at the beginning, especially the first school I was in. Well, it became quite apparent to me at the beginning, especially the first school I was in, that there were no interpreters in the office or anywhere nearby. I mean, I was the closest classroom where they could find a bilingual person and so I was called in there quite a bit during that year and it wasn't pleasant for me to be called out of a classroom when I'm in the middle of teaching a lesson and trying to calm down the students and getting them all in their proper reading groups and everything else that's happening in the morning. So I would say that the school was not entirely aware that there was a big need for interpreting services and at times anybody that had taken maybe two courses in Spanish would go in there and act as an interpreter too, and it wasn't the greatest way to handle the needs of the parents.
Speaker 6:When I became a bilingual resource teacher, I had a little more flexibility because I was able to interpret for teachers during the conferences, iep meetings, and that all of a sudden changed for me because I felt truly helpful.
Speaker 6:And you asked about the contrast between court and schools. Well, obviously I was applying some of my knowledge from my court situations to the school settings, which I really should do, like every interpreter should do, and treating everybody with respect and acting as a professional, signing up for the exchange that's going to take place. So I was very aware of what had to happen in the schools, and at one point I approached the HR person in the district this is a district that had about 13 schools and I said you know, there are some potential interpreters in schools. Why don't we set up a assessment to see who's qualified? And so I was asked to create this assessment so that those that were interested could take part in this assessment and then, at the same time, if they passed they're the salary would be bumped a little bit. So that I did create, and I think that was an important step forward.
Speaker 7:Yes, that mirrored the general population sphere. You know, everything about AI is extremes. I think that's part of part of that is just the media hype. Anything that you put out there has to scream at you to get it get in front of people's eyeballs. So it was either AI is going to save the world it's the next coming of Jesus or AI is the devil and it's going to put us all into this dystopian hell. So that was kind of why I sort of got involved in SafeAI. When I found it, I was like, oh, this is perfect. I need more information to be able to make an informed decision about what I'm going to be talking to my clients about, because they were coming to me going this Gen AI thing. It's great. You know a lot of the school districts and I was like hold the boat.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 7:Wait a minute, because you do not know how this works and you do not know if it's secure. Do not be running your IEPs through that.
Speaker 7:Translate them please, you know, but you get that in the industry, right, you have to do a lot of client education before before they get to realize like, yeah, if it's free, then you are the product, not the thing that you're translating. They are using your materials, as you know information, to train their, train their bot and that's their public information. Then and it's like, oh, that's not what you want to be putting anybody's private information in there for.
Speaker 8:For example, there have been situations where maybe they're organizing an event in a way that interpretation is not going to work call it weather, call it placing, call it whatever but when we're doing the tryout, we're trying to start the system, we see that something is not going to work before the meeting. So we immediately alert our client and there's been situations when people have been brushed off like ah, who cares? But we immediately go to our client we say, hey, this is not your values, this is not what you stand for. You're here and you know that the only way that something is going to work is that everybody is involved, because they hear the community voices, they hear everybody and that's the way it's going to work. So we have stood up to clients, we have stood up to people. We have told them hey, this is not going to work, something is missing, we need this, we need that, and we give them the feedback.
Speaker 8:And and maybe at the beginning we did have like a very bad experience where we feel like we weren't able to do our job. And that's when I tell you, when something goes wrong, where, for example, we're situated or, you know, in a place where maybe the bad, you know, the equipment is not, we're not going to be able, it's not going to be able to reach, because maybe we're at a wall that is not allowing the, the sound to go out. Jordy can explain that better than I. But when that happens, nobody's gonna say, oh, you know what. They were placed against that wall. Most likely that's why it not. No, they're gonna say interpreting. Interpretation did not work, we did not hear and, as you say, having a bad interpretation is like not having anything, so we're not giving language justice.
Speaker 8:So that's when we really have to think do I really want to continue working with somebody that is going to not really, you know, just do it to check the boxes and nobody's going to really hear what we're saying. So, yeah, we do stand up, we do tell them this is not going to work. We should do this. Your values are always that everybody should understand. And an interesting thing I remember sometimes we say we give voice to people that don't have voices, but that's not true. We don't give voices to people that don't have voices. We've given voices to the people that haven't been heard in the past. They've always had a lot to say, but they haven't been heard. So that's really important for us that they really hear them.
Speaker 9:You know, I think it's a couple of components right. So earlier I teased the concept of academic return on investment right, dollars invested for dollars for student growth, and you know that's. I think that's an important component for school leaders to understand and be able to measure and quantify. You know, how the investment is impacting students. I think that's critical. We want to understand what we're spending the money on and we want to understand what we get out of it. And taking a look at data and taking a look at the dollars spent and seeing where you're spending the money and seeing what you get for it, I think is an incredibly important component. And, of course, different districts have different tools in place to measure student growth and to look at student data. There's a lot of great companies out there who do that kind of work. But then to be able to attach some sort of growth metric to measure what do we get out of this investment, of course we made the investment, we spent X amount of dollars, but how much growth did that lead to for our multilingual families? So I really think having a system in place that allows you to measure your impact is really important.
Speaker 9:Now I mentioned a critical word and I've done it a couple of times and that's impact. So the other thing that I talk about with school leaders, as it relates to academic return on investment and the work that we do in K-12 schools, is, you know, it's not about the output, right, it's about the impact. So, when you're thinking about the role of an interpreter, right and I oftentimes don't think school leaders really understand what the role of an interpreter is or how that works but you got to think less about the output understanding. They think too much. It's all. We just need to understand each other. We need to understand each other. Well, it's not always about understanding.
Speaker 9:You think about the role of an interpreter in a special education setting. It's important to develop an understanding. There's lots of ways that we can go about getting an understanding from one another, right. There's tools, there's technologies, there's interpreters, there's all these different ways.
Speaker 9:But one of the important things that we're trying to do within that special education setting is establish credibility and trust with the family. That's so, so incredibly important in special education, especially as you start talking about. You know outplace services, or you know different things that you want. You know families to react to or sign off on, or you know, allow their student to, you know, take advantage of the best of what your district has to offer. You're going to need to get buy-in from that family and you know allowing them to, you know, limp their way through a conversation in broken English is not allowing them to have meaningful participation in their son or daughter's education. It's just not so, you know, when you think about that and you think about, you know, academic return on investment and what we get out of it. I encourage school leaders to think about the output instead of the impact you.
