Communal Translation in the Classroom

Abstract

David was sitting in the corner of our small classroom library when Isabel called him over to her small group. “David, we need you! In Guatemalan Spanish, what does ‘miran’ mean?” David sat down and quietly talked with the group as they worked on a translation of Rosa Chávez’s poem “Ri Ti’ Tuj / La Abuela de Temescal.” I overheard snatches of conversation about syntactical differences in Spanish and English. “We have to change the word order when we translate,” Isabel explained to Victor, another member of the group. Three of the four students in the group were heritage Spanish speakers, with a multitude of relationships to the language; their families were from El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala. For this poem, David was the expert. A few minutes later, he tried to leave again, but the group called him back with a question: “What do you think would match more here for ‘visitarnos’? Visit us, or we visited?” When I consider the idea of translation as community, I think of this moment in my fifthand sixthgrade classroom. In this conversation between students, there were also the echoes of many other voices, both heard and unheard. To begin, there were the words of Rosa Chávez herself: