Translating for her grandparents was something that Jacqueline Moreno, a senior at Tarleton State University, began doing when she was in middle school. Whether they were visiting a doctor or had an important bill in front of them, she would explain complicated issues in words — from English to Spanish — they could understand.
“Even if I didn’t know how to translate a certain word, I would say, ‘Well, it’s like this and this,’ and so I would give them a base explanation. They would understand what I was trying to tell them,” said Moreno, who grew up in Haltom City.
It’s a story that’s familiar for many children of immigrants. Moreno, who is getting her bachelor’s in Spanish, found her calling when Tarleton introduced a new track this fall in translation and interpretation. This spring, Tarleton and Cook Children’s Health Care System launched their first internship in medical interpretation. With the classes and internship, Moreno is taking her real-world experience and professionalizing it.
“You really have to have your wheels turning at all times when you’re in that room with the patient,” said Moreno. “If you hesitate at all — it’s a body language thing — it could really affect (them) like, ‘Oh, are they going to tell me something bad?’”
The university’s track in translation and interpretation includes classes in medical and legal translation, covering ethics, law, regulation, terminology and vocabulary — and practice. Cecilia Marrugo, an associate professor in Spanish, has been teaching virtual classes, where students in the program learn the Spanish words for prosecutor, attorney, bail, felony and all the parts of the body. After more than a decade at the university, Marrugo knows this new track will have a community impact.
“We are not only training them to become highly proficient in two languages, we are also giving them the tools to better serve the Hispanic community as they become instrumental in ensuring equitable access to vital resources, health care and legal assistance,” said Marrugo, who worked as a translator in Colombia.
At Cook Children’s, the students are getting experience in a major hospital system with more than 8,000 employees. The medical system has around 30 in-person interpreters who work with other medical professionals and translate in rooms with patients and their parents. Other than Spanish, top languages used in the hospital are Arabic, Pashto, Swahili, Somali, Vietnamese, French and Korean. The job outlook for interpreters and translators from 2023 to 2033 — at 2% with 7,500 openings projected every year across the nation — is slower than average, according to the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Median pay for the profession in 2023 was $57,090.
“Being bilingual isn’t the equivalent of being able to interpret. You know, it’s different,” said Fallon Thompson, a manager of language services at Cook Children’s. “You can’t add, you can’t omit, you have to come up with things on the spot.”
With the internship, Tarleton and Cook are trying to provide an on-ramp to the sometimes heavy and often intimidating world of medical interpretation. When translators first start, they may expect to hear about patients’ throat or ear infections, Thompson said.
“Then you get in here and you’re hearing diagnoses of different kinds of cancers and it’s like, ‘That’s not what I was prepared for,’” said Thompson, who grew up translating from Spanish to English for her family when they lived in South America.
Students go to the medical center weekly to begin accumulating the experience they will need to succeed in the field.
“My first week was mainly inpatient. And then the second week, I was doing hematology and oncology, and then today is surgery,” Keyra Ortiz, a senior at Tarleton who said students shadow a different interpreter each week. “At the beginning of the day, they’ll do the first two, and once we get into the flow, they’ll let us interpret.”
Both Ortiz and Moreno said translation is what they want to do professionally when they graduate. Anylu Nerio-Garza, director of language services at Cook Children’s, has seen the profession evolve from when she started as an interpreter over two decades ago.
“Oh, we’re pulling our nurse who is bilingual, who speaks Spanish. We’re pulling our registration lady who speaks Arabic at home, and she’s going to help us,” said Nerio-Garza. “As the years have gone by, it now is recognized as its own profession, as its own career.”
Nerio-Garza sees the profession growing in the coming years. At least, at her hospital, that growth won’t be at breakneck speed but in ways that are steady and sustainable. And, with Tarleton’s help, they will have some graduates ready to fill the roles.