Language Access in Translating Community Stories and Researching Reproductive Justice
Mentor 1
Rachel Bloom-Pojar
Start Date
28-4-2023 12:00 AM
Description
I’ve worked with the website Cuentos de Confianza since the fall semester of 2022. Cuentos is a bilingual (English-Spanish) community writing project for promotores de salud (health promoters) to share their experiences on the path to reproductive justice. The site uses both languages to speak to a broader audience and recognize language as a part of reproductive health. Throughout this process I’ve learned how essential it’s to have language inclusion when researching for reproductive justice. Resources are very selective and rarely found in multiple languages. Accessing Spanish resources can become tedious and difficult in comparison to accessing English resources. Community projects are inclusive and holistic, however, there are limits to language access in our community; which expand nationwide. However, community projects create a family which makes it easier to be in an environment of confianza. Confianza being loosely translated to trust. This project allowed me to trust others and have others trust me with intimate and complex stories. This poster will describe my research to compile a set of resources for the Cuentos project. Specifically, I compiled resources related to mental health, women's health/reproductive health, and domestic violence to help the Latinx community with some topics described in the stories by the promoters. I hope the resources I’ve gathered can provide some sense of comfort for the health promoters and also show the readers the reality of the struggles the Latinx community, especially women, face in the state of Wisconsin. My work as a researcher and translator opened the doors for a more casual and friendly approach to translating written work and editing pre existing text. My work also served with connecting the health promoters with an English speaking community. Overall, this project broadened my view on issues that are prevalent in the lives of many around me.
Language Access in Translating Community Stories and Researching Reproductive Justice
I’ve worked with the website Cuentos de Confianza since the fall semester of 2022. Cuentos is a bilingual (English-Spanish) community writing project for promotores de salud (health promoters) to share their experiences on the path to reproductive justice. The site uses both languages to speak to a broader audience and recognize language as a part of reproductive health. Throughout this process I’ve learned how essential it’s to have language inclusion when researching for reproductive justice. Resources are very selective and rarely found in multiple languages. Accessing Spanish resources can become tedious and difficult in comparison to accessing English resources. Community projects are inclusive and holistic, however, there are limits to language access in our community; which expand nationwide. However, community projects create a family which makes it easier to be in an environment of confianza. Confianza being loosely translated to trust. This project allowed me to trust others and have others trust me with intimate and complex stories. This poster will describe my research to compile a set of resources for the Cuentos project. Specifically, I compiled resources related to mental health, women's health/reproductive health, and domestic violence to help the Latinx community with some topics described in the stories by the promoters. I hope the resources I’ve gathered can provide some sense of comfort for the health promoters and also show the readers the reality of the struggles the Latinx community, especially women, face in the state of Wisconsin. My work as a researcher and translator opened the doors for a more casual and friendly approach to translating written work and editing pre existing text. My work also served with connecting the health promoters with an English speaking community. Overall, this project broadened my view on issues that are prevalent in the lives of many around me.
