Animal Welfare Professionals

Our area has a significant Spanish-speaking population and we would love to translate our written materials to help serve more of our community. We have someone who is willing to do the translation, however our issue is that for as long as I've been with the organization (15 years now) we've only ever had two employees who spoke Spanish. I'm worried that translating our written material to Spanish may be "false advertising" as we typically wouldn't be able to actually speak to anyone who came in unless they brought along someone to translate to English, and I don't want to frustrate people contacting or coming to our organization who will understandably assume we do speak Spanish. Even when we do have someone on staff that can speak Spanish, we can't expect them to be available every day for anyone who walks in who doesn't speak English.

Has anyone else been in this situation? Did you translate your material? How did you handle interacting with the Spanish-speaking community?

#Diversity,Equity,InclusionandJustice

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Sam Maurice
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Sam,
Thank you for posting this question and this issue. Recognizing the language barrier outside of the translation is key.

This exact barrier is so important to bring up and a reason why implementing "DEI policies" without involving the community can be ineffective. 

We, CARE, recommend hiring from the community. This may not happen overnight. It may take time to build trust and relationships, which would strengthen any future work and success. 

Hopefully this is helps set your org up for planning.

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Jennifer Evans
CARE
Baltimore MD
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One option that helped us last year with some translation concerns was recruiting Spanish-speaking volunteers. I was able to get a lot of materials translated with that help, and added a box to request translation help at their meeting. We could then try to schedule a time for them and the volunteer to come in to work with staff for whatever was needed (adoption meet and greet, etc).

Unfortunately, we've not done a good job maintaining that volunteer base, but I'd love to get back to it.

Here's a recruiting post we did for volunteers on FB: https://www.facebook.com/RVSPCA/posts/pfbid036zrdnW5uP37tFbVvmegiLB8PNb153m5NtWdrzEHdoS6FYgLvuwD4n2yZ2mwkfGEjl 

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Erin Dams
Roanoke Valley SPCA
Roanoke VA
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Hi Sam, 

I applaud you for wanting to reach your significant Spanish speaking population and totally understand your struggle of not wanting to create "false advertising" by having materials in Spanish but not having someone on-site to help with those Spanish speakers.  A couple recommendations that I've seen other orgs do is to setup an email inbox specifically for the Spanish speaking members of your community. For example, Austin Pets Alive! created an "ayuda@austinpetsalive.org" email address. Your Spanish speaking staff/volunteers could then monitor that inbox and schedule follow up calls or appointments based on their work schedule. You could also do something similar with your phone system. Think of the "press 2 for Spanish" type of automated messages you hear when you call support or a help line. This could be managed similarly with a way for members of your community to leave a message and an automated response that says a Spanish speaking staff member will be in touch within the next 3-5 days, etc.

We also shared other ways orgs are making changes to support other languages on this post here that may help give you some ideas: https://forum.maddiesfund.org/discussion/speaking-your-communitys-language-with-translation-services

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Charlotte Otero
Community Strategist at Maddie's Fund
she/her
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Just because people speak Spanish doesn't mean they don't also speak and/or understand some English! It's not a binary do they/don't they situation. Try not make make assumptions about the community you are trying to include. :)  Plus, people who literally don't speak or understand any English at all already know they need to bring someone to help them out in daily life if they know they are going somewhere in the primarily English-speaking community.

Doing nothing is worse than the possibility of having a language barrier at the shelter. Language barriers can be overcome with Spanglish, google translate, and a sense of humor, but you won't get that far if people feel ignored or not included in the first place. So do the translations. You can even include a note saying there may not always be a fluent Spanish-speaker on site but you'll do your best, and you can add that you are actively looking for Spanish-speaking volunteers and staff. 

Also, in the Spanish-speaking community, English-speakers making effort to speak or engage in Spanish is seen as good thing. Even if you mangle it, people generally appreciate the effort and the good intentions. It's the effort that counts.  (in contrast to how many English-speakers in the USA are annoyed or even offended by nonnative speakers who don't know English well)

And of course, the main problem is that your organization is not already including your whole community. But you are aware of it and that's great, so hopefully the translation project will be only the first step towards including everyone!

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M Saucedo
GIS Analyst
Pets for Life
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