Room for Interpretation: How Nashville Could Better Serve Its Multilingual Community

It’s somewhat rare to find an atmosphere as open and welcoming as the one provided by the Nashville Spanish-English Conversation Group. The group was established to provide both English and Spanish speakers opportunities to practice their language skills in a relaxed environment. There are no lesson plans or rules — just a shared interest in language acquisition and enough people to practice with, even when that means doing so imperfectly. 

“You’re American, you want to practice your Spanish? You are welcome,” says Nashville Spanish-English Conversation Group creator Daniel Huerta Marquez. “You are a Latino, you want to practice your English? You are more than welcome. You’re from another country? You’re more than welcome. That’s my intention, to make this kind of like a safe space for everybody.”

The group has blossomed into a large community, with nearly 2,000 members on the virtual platform Meetup and biweekly in-person sessions of around 30 people each. At first Huerta Marquez wasn’t sure if anyone would join, but now he has dozens of friends from across the world who he wouldn’t have met otherwise. The group is a prime example of the joy that can be found in celebrating different cultures — and Nashville could benefit from more like it in an array of languages. 

Spanish is the second-most-spoken language in Nashville, but it’s just one of many represented in Davidson County, which has seen a significant rise in its multicultural population in recent years. Nashville, for instance, is home to the largest Kurdish population in the United States. According to Metro’s Director of New Americans Mohamed-Shukri Hassan, the top 10 languages represented in Nashville are Spanish, Arabic, Kurdish, Somali, Swahili, Burmese, Amharic, Vietnamese, Nepali and Farsi. Students who are actively learning English and those who have transitioned out of the English Learners program within the past four school years represent nearly 140 languages and 27 percent of Metro Nashville Public Schools attendees. That’s around 22,000 students.

From the Uzbek cuisine at Osh to the city’s burgeoning Latin music scene, Nashville’s diversity enriches its character, offering multifarious perspectives, ideas and cultural identities. Plenty of research shows that diversity, in all its forms, enhances economic and social development across sectors. But there are still significant gaps in how this city serves its multicultural residents — particularly those who are learning English. 

Language access is a federal right, as established by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. That right was further cemented in 2000 by an executive order from the Clinton administration. Organizations that receive federal financial assistance have an obligation to “take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to their programs and activities” in a way that is “consistent with, and without unduly burdening, the fundamental mission of the agency.” This includes, to varying degrees, government and community services, health care facilities, educational institutes, nonprofits and more. These same entities have a similar responsibility to provide deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals with access to American Sign Language under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and to provide services to those with other communication disabilities. The concept and process of providing limited English proficiency (or LEP) people — and deaf people — with language services as a federal right is commonly referred to as language access or language justice. 

“Is there some level of language justice being provided [in Nashville]? Absolutely,” says professional interpreter and career coach Diana Sanchez-Vega. “But it’s not at the level it should be provided.”

Nashville has a long way to go in providing comprehensive language access, and doing so requires more than plopping a few interpreters in different settings, as consideration of aspects like cultural competency is also necessary. Establishing a proper multilingual and multicultural infrastructure would enrich Nashville, culturally and economically, for everyone — including native English speakers. 

The notion that some people cannot speak English because they lack the desire or intelligence to do so is an uninformed assumption.

Many of these people are in Nashville because of circumstances beyond their control, including refugees who’ve fled the current war in Ukraine, or those who escaped the Kurdish genocide of the 1980s. As these folks enter a new country and navigate the red tape that comes with it, learning English often comes second to surviving. Even those who are willing and able to learn the language face barriers. 

“It’s not that people don’t want to learn English,” says Becca Blank of Voces de Nashville, an organization that teaches Spanish. “There aren’t enough classes, and there aren’t classes that work with the economic pressures that people are under. And so we [all] have to do our part. We also have to create the conditions for that to happen.”

Voces de Nashville was created to “unite Nashville’s multicultural communities through language learning,” and in the process empowers Latina women by providing career opportunities. It also seeks to address the need for more Spanish speakers within Metro Nashville Public Schools. 

“One of the biggest deficiencies in schools is the language barrier, because … there are teachers who are very willing and open to supporting students to their best ability, and parents as well,” says Voces de Nashville’s Kissie Gutiérrez Ramírez, via interpretation by Becca Blank. “But because of the language [barrier], they’re not able to do that.”

While MNPS has its own office of English learners, which addresses this need throughout the district, there’s always more work to be done. But K-12 students are significantly more equipped to learn English than adults. 

“We have centralized services that are offered through our local school district that have a lot of research-based interventions going into them,” says Brandon White, director of education for the Nashville International Center for Empowerment. “For adult learners, there is no system that provides services to all adults cohesively.”

While there are myriad English classes in Nashville offered by MNPS, nonprofits like NICE, the Nashville Public Library and other organizations, the demand for these classes continues to outweigh the supply. What’s more, barriers like work schedules, cost and transportation remain — though the virtual classes that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic opened new opportunities for more convenient language instruction. 

Nashville’s lacking public transit system provides little help for those without cars. What’s more, undocumented individuals aren’t eligible for  driver’s licenses, and the test isn’t offered in Arabic — Tennessee’s third-most-spoken language. 

“Some of the backlash [is], ‘This is Tennessee, why don’t you just learn the language?’ ” says Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the American Muslim Advisory Council. “Well, we were helping put together ESL classes for Afghans [and] realized that it’s hard for them, they don’t have transportation to even get to one location for ESL classes, and then the work schedules … are all over the place. And so that’s a challenge in and of itself.”

The AMAC is a part of the campaign Our State, Our Languages, which is currently circulating a petition demanding more language access for the state driver’s license test. Tennessee’s test is offered in English, Spanish, German, Korean and Japanese, and other Southern states, including Alabama, offer the test in Arabic. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security tells the Scene the department “is currently considering this request.”

With resources to teach English lacking, people and organizations must bridge the communication gap through interpretation services. Even still, that’s more complicated than calling a language line or bringing in a bilingual person. While providing any kind of interpretation service is better than having nothing — and again, it’s a federal requirement for many organizations — depending entirely on interpretation is a stopgap solution to a greater problem. That problem includes a lack of language infrastructure that sufficiently prioritizes diverse representation, bilingual employees and on-staff interpreters who are familiar with the inner workings of the given organization. 

Interpretation services include a spectrum of requirements and qualifications that change depending on the setting. Diana Sanchez-Vega has created an entire business around training bilingual people to become professional interpreters and training organizations how to effectively work with them. “Bilingualism is already a highly developed skill,” says Sanchez-Vega. “But interpreting is an even higher developed skill.”

“There are so many standards of practice that we abide by, a code of ethics that I didn’t know existed before I was trained,” says freelance medical interpreter Gabriela Bohórquez. “We can talk about impartiality … confidentiality, advocacy, professionalism. You also have to know your role’s boundaries [and] where your limits are as an interpreter. And so many times you are asked to go beyond those boundaries, because people don’t know. And I’m talking about patients and facilities, or providers as well.”

Bohórquez notes the challenges of her job, including working with those who aren’t receptive to interpreters. One doctor, she says, attempted to forgo her interpretation services because Bohórquez wasn’t visible the moment he entered the examination room. (She says interpreters cannot wait with the patients inside the exam room when doctors are not present, and Bohórquez had been seated nearby while waiting.) While the doctor insisted that the patient spoke English, it was conversational English, and the patient didn’t have the proficiency necessary to understand a medical diagnosis. So Bohórquez had to ask the doctor to explain the diagnosis again. “He was annoyed,” says Bohórquez. “He rolled his eyes, and then he started going through it, of course, very quickly. He just wanted to get rid of us. And yeah, that was a super bad experience that I had, where I had to advocate for myself and the patient.”

“I have to remind patients that we’re not there to be friends and I cannot share personal information with them,” says Bohórquez. While the need for these boundaries is understandable — particularly in medical and legal situations — they can also add a layer of discomfort to already stressful circumstances.

“No one should have to feel like, ‘I’m talking to someone who could affect my life, and they don’t understand me,’ ” says Lydia Yousief, director of the Elmahaba Center, which serves Arabic-speaking people in Nashville. “And I don’t think a lot of white people think about that. What does it mean when I’m trying to describe a painful experience or some pain in my body? And there’s someone next to me — and it’s no fault of their own, they’re just doing their job — they don’t feel that pain. They don’t know how to describe it, and they’re the ones speaking on behalf of you.”

Beyond speaking another language, interpreters should also have the cultural competence necessary to understand the needs of the communities they’re representing. “Arabic in Nashville looks very different from … Arabic in New York, because there’s a different context, different class, different homeland and migration history,” says Yousief. 

The nuances that come with interpretation demonstrate the need to have a multilingual workforce that can authentically engage and interact with the communities they serve. This shouldn’t, however, mean conflating multilingual staff members with interpreters. Not only is there a danger in relying upon those who aren’t properly trained to explain industry-specific terms (which can present potential legal ramifications), but it can also place an unfair burden on multilingual employees who are expected to interpret on top of their regular workload — particularly if they’re not being compensated for that extra work and expertise. A lack of proper communication can sometimes lead to life-threatening situations. 

Nancy Denning-Martin is the president and CEO of Bridges for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. She describes to the Scene an instance in which a deaf man, who was never provided an interpreter, was wrongfully arrested and jailed for a week “in what was, ultimately, a misunderstanding. … The judge recognized that his rights had been completely violated.” Bridges was able to use that experience as a catalyst to implement a Deaf Driver Safety database, but it took a human rights violation for that change to happen. 

As a matter of necessity, a lot of advocacy, education and labor surrounding language access is led by nonprofits and advocacy groups like Bridges. That’s especially the case when it comes to vital city information and emergency response communications. 

“Another huge thing that we’re seeing is a massive discrepancy and massive, very salient language inaccessibility … when it comes to disaster relief and management,” says Luis Mata of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “And we saw that very evidently [during] the tornado, the floods in Nashville. … People don’t realize this discrepancy and don’t realize this need here until a disaster happens or until it’s a life-or-death situation. And that is exactly why we must continue working toward robust and proactive initiatives, instead of reactionary initiatives.”

“Institutions cannot look at their nonprofits as [the ones to] fix the problem,” says Martha Silva, co-director of Latino community nonprofit Conexión Américas. “But absolutely, they can see us as a source of input, knowledge and expertise, because that’s what we do every day, is working with unserved communities that actually fell in the cracks of that lack of service.”

Federal language policies and the Americans With Disabilities Act have both been in place for decades, Nashville’s LEP population has grown significantly in that time, and members of the Deaf community have always been here. So it’s worth wondering why the city isn’t further along in addressing these community needs.

“It’s hard to get something as big as a metropolitan government to switch gears and not do things the way they’ve always done things,” says District 30 Metro Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda. “I don’t want to give the impression that we’re not trying. I think we’ve done more than what has been done in the past, but we still have a ways to go.”

Improvements include Spanish subtitles for Metro Council meetings, and the city’s Office of New Americans, which engages multicultural community members through multiple avenues, like the New Americans Advisory Council and a program called MyCity Academy. The academy educates New Americans about Metro’s processes so they can relay that information back to their communities. Metro’s website has a translation tab that offers many different languages. Metro has a published “Language Access Guide and Toolkit” that outlines expectations around language access, and annual Title VI compliance reports indicate which departments are sufficiently addressing this. It’s not much, but considering the fact that 43 percent of Nashville voters just 14 years ago voted in favor of a galvanizing “English only” proposal, which aimed to make English the local government’s official language, it’s something.

There are a number of ways in which the public and private sectors can further address language access — and a lot of it simply boils down to weaving multicultural community members more fully into Nashville’s operational fabric. That means expanded, proactive policies that aren’t just there to satisfy a requirement, but truly consider and embrace Nashville’s entire population. It means carving out space for more interpreters in the city budget, and more deeply involving Deaf and multilingual people in the process. Additionally, properly investing in multilingual education can create a local workforce capable of addressing these needs. 

These ideas require big, sometimes abstract actions that take time and money to implement. Small steps can make a huge difference — steps like translating web pages, documents and applications, and relying more on locals instead of over-the-phone interpretation services. There are also actions individuals can take, like speaking slowly and clearly, pausing more often during simultaneous interpretations and leaving time for people to ask questions through interpreters during events. 

Community members can push their elected officials to prioritize language justice. They can interact with organizations that support their multilingual neighbors by donating or volunteering, specifically to organizations whose leadership represents the communities they serve. Folks don’t have to be fluent in other languages to engage, though there are plenty of places to learn and practice a new language. The Tennessee Language Center, for example, can provide foundational instruction, and spaces like the Nashville Spanish-English Conversation Group can help people practice new language skills and meet friends while doing so. 

These steps aren’t just for emergent bilingual and Deaf community members. They’re for everyone. 

“[Language access] is a human right,” says Conexión Américas’ Silva. “We cannot sign anything without understanding, we cannot agree on anything, so those are critical moments when we have to remind ourselves and everybody — the state and the city and anybody involved — that, ‘Hold on, this cannot be pushed, this cannot be rushed, because this person needs to absolutely understand what is happening.’ ”

“We need to be more intentional,” she says. “We need to be more realistic, we need to not put bottlenecks in the processes. And then I believe that the solution is right here in the people. We have the people, we have the families, we have the youth. It’s changeable. We actually can go and talk to them right now if anybody needs an idea of how we can make this more realistic.”