Posts

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TLC Presents Spanish for Medical Professionals

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TLC’s Genna Linton presented a 4-hour long training to 30 nurses at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The course, “Spanish for Medical Professionals: A Linguistic and Cultural Toolkit,” was focused on words, phrases, and cultural norms to help non-Spanish speaking nurses better relate to non-English speaking patients. This will potentially impact hundreds of patients working with these nurses. Just being able to ask if they are in pain or if they need water in the language the patient understands will improve the quality of care they are receiving.

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TLC Offers Fall Terminology Webinar for Interpreters

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TLC offered an online webinar in April for Spanish interpreters on the terminology for falls, particularly in regard to Workers’ Compensation cases. The work involves specialized knowledge of both medical and legal terminology. Spanish Interpreters from Tennessee, Louisiana, and New Mexico completed the webinar and are now better able to handle appointments for Workers’ Compensation cases after completing the course, and the clients they are interpreting for are better represented.

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TLC Featured in Recent Podcast

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The Tennessee Language Center was featured in the most recent In Touch With Tennessee podcast. The podcast is produced by the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service. This one features TLC’s Interim Director of Interpretation and Translation Services (ITS) talking about our language services. It’s about 12 minutes long – check it out!

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New Medical Interpreting Students Graduate

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Congratulations to the 14 students who graduated from the Tennessee Language Center’s Medical Interpreter Training session on Dec. 13. The students represented 3 states (Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma), 5 Tennessee counties, and two languages (Spanish and Mandarin Chinese). Mandarin Chinese was a new language for TLC and increases our total number of languages served to date from 7 to 8. TLC’s program prepares students to take the test to become a certified medical interpreter through either the CCHI or the NBCMI, the two organizations that certify medical interpreters in the U.S. Find out more about TLC’s medical interpreting program.

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Fall Court Interpreter Workshop Concludes

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The Fall Court Interpreter Workshop had 26 participants representing 16 counties in Tennessee. For the first time, an interpreter for Karen, the language spoken in Myanmar and parts of Thailand, took the course. This workshop provided by the Tennessee Language Center is the first step in becoming an interpreter with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

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TLC Interpreter Webinar Focuses on End of Life Conversations

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TLC presented a webinar on Oct. 22 for interpreters, especially medical interpreters, about interpreting for end-of-life conversations. With palliative and hospice care becoming more common, interpreters are often present for these conversations, and the workshop focused on how to handle them.

“The subject was very interesting, and it does not get covered a lot,” said one attendee. “This was one of the best webinars I ever attended.”

Gavel resting on a desk with a book and balance in the background

27 Complete Summer Court Interpreter Workshop

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The Tennessee Language Center’s Summer Court Interpreter Workshop had 27 participants from 16 different counties and two states (TN and MS). Our students included a Metro Nashville Police Department officer who wanted to improve his interpreting skills in order to better assist the Hispanic community he serves, an Afghan refugee currently working as a Dari interpreter in community settings who wanted to expand his services to the legal field, and a polyglot African student who speaks English, Swahili, French, and Portuguese, who also wanted to take his interpreting skills to the next level. TLC’s Court Interpreter Workshop is an approved training program for court interpreters in the state of Tennessee consisting of 14 hours of training on the Tennessee court system, ethics and standards of practice, and interpreting skills.

 

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TLC Provides Interpretation for TIMES Reporter Doing COVID-19 Article

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TLC Project Manager and Interpreter Richard Ponce de Leon assisted TIME Magazine journalist Abigail Abrams interview six Spanish-speaking migrant workers in East Tennessee. Abrams was writing an article on COVID-19 vaccine rollout across the nation. The workers harvest and process tomatoes at Jones & Church Farm in Unicoi, Tennessee.

Read the published article here.

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Interpreter Caffrey Receives Recognition for Volunteer Work

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Congratulations to Dennis Caffrey – instructor, trainer and interpreter for TLC for many years – on being recognized by Hands On Nashville with a Mary Catherine Strobel Volunteer Award for his volunteer work with Siloam Health.

As Siloam navigated serving on the frontlines of the pandemic with an incredibly diverse patient base, Dennis was the steady go-between communicator as staff cared for COVID-19 patients, educated others about the risks of the coronavirus, and eventually began administering vaccines to patients. His help in not only interpreting one language from another but overcoming cultural barriers ensured patients felt comfortable, heard, and that their needs were being met.

Dennis started to learn Spanish when he was 8-years-old, and advanced his knowledge of the language throughout college. Dennis spent 15 years of his Air Force career working in and with Latin America. Shortly after retiring from the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., he and his wife moved to Murfreesboro, TN.

“After about four months of ‘doing nothing,’ I took a course to become a medical interpreter and it was there that I learned about Siloam,” Dennis says. “It seemed like the perfect way for me to share my language and cultural skills while helping our non-English speaking neighbors deal with their health needs. That was by far the best decision I made since retirement.”

Dennis began volunteering with Siloam in 2010, and has been volunteering longer than the majority of Siloam Health’s staff. In 2020, he reached the milestone of 5,000 hours served with Siloam, completing 500 of those last year alone.