The Tennessee Language Center and Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee partnered to provide Spanish language classes for Second Harvest staff, volunteers, and partners. Hear more about it on the latest episode of In Touch with Tennessee, “Bridging Language Barriers in Community Service.” Listen.
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.
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.
TLC is translating housing advocacy documents into Spanish for The Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands’ Right to Counsel program. The Right to Counsel is a two-year pilot program that increased the number of Legal Aid housing attorneys from two to six. The attorneys represent renters in civil cases with landlords. The documents inform Hispanic clients of their legal rights. This will allow the Right to Counsel attorneys to better assist their Spanish-speaking clients.
TLC is proud of the Spanish for Educators program created by the World Languages team for receiving the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Public Service Vice Presidential Citation. This award recognizes a special effort by staff members who go above and beyond normal job assignments or have worked relentlessly on a complex project. Congratulations to Brian Barnett, Jack Willey, Maya Campbell, and Stasie Harrington for their work on creating this course.
Spanish for Educators was created for K-12 teachers, school staff, and administrators with very little to no previous Spanish study to develop cultural understanding and a basic repertoire of conversation skills to engage with Spanish speakers in their schools and local communities. It is offered four times a year. Contact worldlanguages@tennessee.edu for more information.
The fifth “Spanish for Educator’s 10-week course began on April 4 with 13 participants. The group are all Metro Nashville Public School teachers from either Glencliff High School or the schools that feed into Glencliff. The course was developed by TLC to help participants with little or no previous Spanish study to develop a cultural understanding and a basic repertoire of conversation skills to engage with Spanish speakers in their schools and local communities.
The Parthenon in Centennial Park in Nashville is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens and a major tourist and cultural attraction for the city. Visitors can listen to an audio tour of the Parthenon, and they wanted to make it available in other languages to make it more accessible. TLC is currently translating the audio tour script into Spanish and Arabic. Then, TLC Training Specialist Richard Ponce de Leon and Medical Interpreting Trainer Nadia Crank will provide the voiceovers for recording the script. The Parthenon is visited by more than 300,000 people a year from across Tennessee and the United States.