Comments on: Lost in translation

By: Happy 3rd Birthday Radical Doula: Fun facts « Radical Doula

Happy 3rd Birthday Radical Doula: Fun facts « Radical Doula — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:03:00 +0000

[...] March 5: Lost in Translation [...]

By: vanessa

vanessa — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:22:13 +0000

what if you said to the medical staff something like “i can understand everything you’re saying, and am thus put into the position of trying to decide what information to relay to our client. could you help me out by only saying things in my presence that you want relayed to our client?”

i realize that there can be mad tension between hospital staff and doulas/midwives, and that your number one goal is contributing to the best situation for your client. thus, you wouldn’t want to do anything that would tick off anyone who has the potential to mess with said situation. at the same time, though, i think there would be a way to non-aggressively remind them that what they’re saying is heard by both of you, and understood completely by you (and i would imagine at least partially by your clients, since communication is about way more than words).

By: Tanya

Tanya — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:44:16 +0000

Didn’t know that story about your mom and the dictionary – adorable!

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:47:54 +0000

You are writing so many of my thoughts from the time I worked with a lot of women who only spoke Spanish. I have had nurses and doctors literally talking to me over a woman’s head, or cozying up to me as I sat at the bedside, and starting a conversation in English that the laboring woman could not understand. So many times women looked at me, knowing without question that the other people in the room were talking about them but not knowing what they were saying. I would often find myself catching the doctor/nurse’s attention and pointedly beginning to translate, only to find them suddenly remember that there was a patient in the room. “Oh yeah, tell her…”

It was so frustrating, and I think you put it perfectly: it’s power that you don’t want. While I was sometimes able to use it subversively, in the end I wasn’t comfortable having to make those decisions. But it didn’t matter whether I was comfortable, because I had to make them anyway.

Don’t even get me started on the care providers who thought they could speak Spanish and made it impossible for ANYONE to understand what they were talking about.

By: Alison

Alison — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:06:28 +0000

“…even when I felt like I was protecting her from hearing something she wouldn’t want to hear”

wow, I wouldn’t have thought about this. sound like an impossibly complicated position to be in.

By: becka

becka — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:11:45 +0000

As a new doula this is something I’ve been thinking about, leading up to attending my first couple of births. Not specifically translating an actual language, but the idea of stepping in to interperet what medical staff are saying or being a women’s voice when they aren’t able to. While I know my/our training tells us that this isn’t within our role, I wonder how you can always stick to that. Especially in situations where you know that a woman isn’t fully understanding what is going on, and decisions are being made without her consent.