Mother's Child Was Taken for Lack of an Interpreter
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New York City employs 347 interpreters--but that was not enough for this mother. Pema Tsomo speaks fluent Tibetan and Nepali. Her child was taken away and she was arrested because a school bus didn't show up and she left the child alone to go to work.
For three days, this mother ate nothing but cold cereal and milk while she waited in detention for an interpreter. A lot of other women around her were crying.
A great article in the American Bar Association's ABA Journal chronicles the journey to justice for this mother and many. It quotes then-Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez in 2010 when he spelled out in a letter to courts: "Language services expenses should be treated as a basic and essential operating expense, not as an ancillary cost." Bravo.
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Language Matters--Even in Life and Death
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A story about the Arabic language ends with a moving story about Spanish. Journalist Mohammad Hassan Al Harbi shares this tale. For us to realise how important any language is to its people, we can recall the story of a soldier fighting in the Spanish Civil in 1936-1939, who kept firing his gun and refused to surrender despite the fact that all his comrades were killed. The leader of the opposing force told his fighters to refrain from firing and wait until the attacker ran out of bullets. Once the soldier was captured, the leader of the opposing force asked the soldier why he did not yield. The soldier revealed a piece of paper containing a poem by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, and replied: "This is what I'm defending!"P.S. Thanks to Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban for sharing this story! |
