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LOS ANGELES-- Youth Radio's Mayra Jimenez vividly remembers her first trip to the bank. She was in eighth grade. Thing is, she wasn't there to open her own bank account. She was there to help her immigrant parents from Mexico navigate the banking system by translating for them. Scholars call it "language brokering." Youth Radio's Mayra Jimenez reports.
MAYRA: I was 13 when I spoke to a bank teller for the first time. That was five years ago.My parents were having money problems. Back then, they didn't speak a lot of English. So I had to translate their questions.
Here's my father, Jose Trinidad:
JOSE TRINIDAD, THROUGH A TRANSLATOR: It wasn't the same as us being able to directly ask the things we wanted to ask. It was very difficult. You weren't mature enough.You were too small to understand the things we wanted to ask about the house and the bank.
Scholars call this "language brokering." That's when children of immigrants translate for their parents. A Pew survey found that only a small minority of Latino immigrants say they speak English well. But almost 90% of their U.S.-born adult children are fluent.
Ana Castillo remembers translating for her mom. But she admits being kind of embarrassed about it:
ANA CASTILLO: I really couldn't imagine other children having to do what I was doing, and I feel like it's something that I never talked about when I was growing up. Like, "Hey I went to the bank yesterday with my Mom! What did you do?" It's not a conversation to have on the playground.
Now, Ana can smile about it. She's 26 and works full-time as a community organizer in South LA. But translating caused a lot of stress.
CASTILLO: If I made a mistake then my mom would be upset about it afterwards, and just getting picked for that, that was really hard, because I always tried to help my mom out, and having done the opposite--that just really sucks. But in the long run, I think it helped me as an adult, because I'm still in that world and still negotiating with people.
It helped me too. Now, I understand the basics of banking. I know how to watch an account. And I'm careful about avoiding overdraft fees. But, it was hard figuring out complicated transactions for my parents.
UCLA Professor Marjorie Faulstich Orellana studies the role of young language brokers like me.
MARJORIE FAULSTICH ORELLANA: They can feel indignation when they see their families being treated unfairly by institutions of the larger society. But they also are feeling the power that they have to make a difference: to speak up, to do things that other kids don't do; to feel needed and valued and appreciated.
About a year and a half ago, my parents wanted to buy a house in Texas. I had to translate all the fine print for them. When the house was in escrow, my mom stopped working because of an injury.We lost the house.And, in Ana's case, things got bad when her mom's house foreclosed. At the time, Ana wasn't around to help.
CASTILLO: In some ways, I try not to feel responsible for what happened to that house, because that's when I was in college. So I was 300 miles away from home, so I couldn't help her through that. And so I wonder, had I been in Los Angeles, would it have been different, would I have helped her to make a better decision along the way.
Having to translate for our families puts young people like Ana and me in a tough spot. But, for the health of our families' finances, we need to give our parents a voice.
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