Breakout Room 1 Notes

Language Access Work Group

Notes from 

Meeting 1 Breakout Room 1

July 25, 2023

Breakout Room 1 Participants                                       Breakout Room 1 Facilitator

Gabrielle Bachmeier                                                               Sharon Armstrong 

Nadia Damchii 

Helen Eby 

Marguerite Friedlander, Esq 

Jon Gould 

Luisa Gracia 

Jarrod Irvin 

Natalya Mytareva 

Carrie Huie-Pascua 

Elsie Rodriguez Paz 

Casey Peplow 

 

Question 1: 

Why is this work important to Washingtonians?

Question 2: 

How do you think we reach our unifying goal in the most equitable, accessible, and financially reasonable way?

 

  • There was a lot of support in our room regarding the importance of providing quality interpretive services through the certification process. 

 

  • Emphasis and focus on students and youths who serve as interpreters for their parents, and one scenario specifically had to do with student-teacher conferences, and how there are clear ethical concerns with those.  

 

  • It is everyone's right to have quality interpretive services. Especially when we are talking about historically marginalized populations. And if we are talking about medical concerns, then a lot of times these include infectious issues and diseases. Now we are further marginalizing people if they cannot adequately communicate fluidly back and forth. So, the need is definitely there.  

 

  • Also, populations that are smaller, their language interpretive services, there is less access to those services because the populations are smaller, but they are growing. There is a clear need, regardless. Access to interpretive services is hard to come by, if at all. 

 

  • Essentially, everyone in the U.S. has rights to quality interpretation services. It also helps create jobs for people within the U.S.  

 

  • One other point, there is room for misinterpretation and misdiagnosis. We were really in support of in person interpretive service because without it is without equality, being able to interpret body language or take in the information equitably, because everybody is receiving it at the same time, lived time and importance of that.