First page of the new story arc! You know, I don't think we've ever seen Tess before. Bess is the crazy angry one, Tess is the really high strung or mean one, depending on the day. Today she seems to be a little bit of both.
For those who didn't know: In Social Services offices it is common practice to accept written documents from clients regardless of what language they're written in. It is expected the workers will translate the documents themselves or seek the services of professional interpretors. Javiera speaks Spanish, so she can do this herself.
My social services office sees a lot of Spanish-speaking clients, and this sometimes generates conversations among the workers about the pros and cons of accepting Spanish documents or providing Spanish applications. I wanted to explore this in IJWH for two big reasons: First, there is no escaping the reality that people of all walks of life, speaking all kinds of different languages, walk through our doors; and that language barrier comes with a few inherent challenges. Second, the reactions I've seen in people tend to vary from being completely unphased to becoming irrationally angry. Like Tess.
I'm pretty confident this is an issue faced in more places than just social services offices: hospitals, banks, the DMV... you name it. I'm not going to make assumptions on what the "right" or "wrong" reaction to having to handle documents in another language is... but hopefully this will give people something to think about. Or talk about on social media. I'll take either one. ^_^
First page of the new story arc! You know, I don't think we've ever seen Tess before. Bess is the crazy angry one, Tess is the really high strung or mean one, depending on the day. Today she seems to be a little bit of both.
For those who didn't know: In Social Services offices it is common practice to accept written documents from clients regardless of what language they're written in. It is expected the workers will translate the documents themselves or seek the services of professional interpretors. Javiera speaks Spanish, so she can do this herself.
My social services office sees a lot of Spanish-speaking clients, and this sometimes generates conversations among the workers about the pros and cons of accepting Spanish documents or providing Spanish applications. I wanted to explore this in IJWH for two big reasons: First, there is no escaping the reality that people of all walks of life, speaking all kinds of different languages, walk through our doors; and that language barrier comes with a few inherent challenges. Second, the reactions I've seen in people tend to vary from being completely unphased to becoming irrationally angry. Like Tess.
I'm pretty confident this is an issue faced in more places than just social services offices: hospitals, banks, the DMV... you name it. I'm not going to make assumptions on what the "right" or "wrong" reaction to having to handle documents in another language is... but hopefully this will give people something to think about. Or talk about on social media. I'll take either one. ^_^