Lena Moran: A Voice that Bridges the Language Gap

Most people hear Lena Moran’s voice before they meet her in person. I consider myself part of the very few that met her in person first when I found out she was going to be my internship mentor. As the Program Manager of the Language Justice Initiative at Just Communities, her voice is the first impression whether one is talking to her on the phone in hopes of hiring her for a workshop or through an earpiece when she’s interpreting at events. Confident, compassionate, and charismatic, many people are surprised when they first meet her. Whether it’s because of her Mexican heritage or youthful appearance, any doubt of her professionalism never affects the results she delivers. Her experience and stories are interwoven into the material she teaches which not only resonates with her clients, but lays the foundation for language justice.

We conducted our interview over the phone because Lena is always on the go, but always very warm with her “hello”. While she is anchored at Just Communities in downtown Santa Barbara, Lena goes to where she’s needed and the demand is high for her services – whether that is at Goleta Unified School District or emergency press meetings in Ventura. “The rest of the office is the rest of the world,” she says. “The beauty of this work is that it’s not tied to any particular stakeholder – my environment is the Central Coast.”

The Person Behind the Voice

At just 34 years old with a Master’s in Education with an emphasis on Social Justice and Leadership from Antioch University, she spearheads the Language Justice Initiative which promotes best practices for creating inclusive multilingual spaces where all languages are valued equally. Initiatives include Interpreting for Social Justice Workshops, forty hour trainings for bilingual/multilingual certification, and recently organizing a network of interpreters to disseminate crucial information during the Thomas Fire and subsequent mudslides. With such emotional work being the bridge between, Lena never loses the necessary invisibility of her work.

“I should be doing my job so well that you should be talking like there’s no language barrier… then you finally hear voices that should be heard a long time ago.”

Though she did not start officially interpreting until 2010, Lena has been bridging language disparities since she was young. Born in Mexico and raised speaking Spanish, Lena didn’t move to the U.S. until she was six years old. As a product of early 1990s education, she excelled in her academics because of home language foundation. Though Spanish and English were the two working languages through first and third grade, Lena remembers seeing her friends grow up to lose their mother tongue. After fourth grade she only had an English language education, but the first three years of her American education allowed her to hear the world and shuffle between languages. Typical of the child immigrant experience, Lena served as an unofficial interpreter for her parents despite her family’s progressive integration into their new home. However, that is not the case for many children who are often the compass navigating their families through foreign English jargon and documents.

Lena jokes that she fell into this type of work, but has long felt the pressure of the role she had to play. “How could I be bilingual and not help people out?” was a question that constantly plagued her mind so she dove into her role. However, the toll of interpreting is a heavy one. Recognizing that there there was no support or additional training so she decided to do something.“I didn’t want children to feel the way I felt – feeling scared like they’re forced to interpret. And as the work continues, I feel like less kids are being back into that corner.”

Working Through Vicarious Trauma

Working alongside Lena as her intern, I can attest to the fact that her phone vibrates constantly with phone calls and text messages from her network of interpreters. Ranging from questions about technical vocabulary or requests for personal validation, Lena answers with a friendliness that is always professional and nurturing.

The work of interpretation and language justice is incredibly personal in addition to being interdisciplinary. Though language disparities have existed as long as immigration has, language justice has not. Ensuring that all voices are heard and included in the process of community change toward social justice is more important now than ever in this political climate. Carrying two languages is something Lena does well even while wearing multiple hats, but self-care was something she had to learn the hard way due to the vicarious trauma that comes with speaking the horrors of someone else with one’s own mouth even if it is a different language.

“These are people that identify with you. You’re their savior sometimes because you carry their language. I want to take care of them but I know that I can’t,” she takes a moment, but gains confidence in her tone. “No one likes putting limits on yourself, but my job isn’t to fix one thing, it’s to fix the system.”

Though heralded as the expert in her field, Lena remains humble. “I’m one person, I can’t save the world even though I want to. It’s nice being known as the expert but it’s not sustainable.”

When asked about her activism, she hesitates. “I consider myself an educator,” she responds thoughtfully. “Activism is fighting for inclusive spaces which is what we do, but I’m attached to an idea that interpreting is a profession.” She explains that mindset is easier to work with because if they do not, there is a large risk of someone undermining language has a too broad of an initiative that anyone can do.

Despite work logistics, Lena believes that language justice advocates are integral parts of social justice. Due to the hands on approach Lena approaches her workshops, her students are not only that inequalities are everywhere, but are provided the tools to level the playing field.

A Piece of the Social Justice Puzzle

During our interview a work emergency about the upcoming school board meeting dealing with gun threats at San Marcos interrupts. Quickly apologizing, she hangs up to get to work. For Lena, there is not normal work day just as there is no normal way to learn a language. When natural disasters hit the Central Coast in December and January, Lena was stuck in her home in Oxnard – feeling helpless to do the job she grew into. However, if you know Lena Moran, you know she is able to think on her feet and build a network of people within minutes. Emergency language centers were open for those who could not understand the rapid information trying to spread faster than the fire itself. Crash course workshops about interpreting were given out for free so more interpreters could be trained. Vigils were organized with interpreters so multilingual voices could be heard and mourned.

When we continue our conversation, we delve into the consequences of improper interpreting and translating. During my Interpreting for Social Justice workshop, the floor was open to talk about trauma experienced in this work. Stories, including mine, include being yanked from personal time or out of the blue by people we felt uncomfortable saying no to in order to do them a favor. With no training, it was no wonder that so many of us felt like we failed and felt like we had to carry that guilt as penance.

Throughout it all, Lena understood and bridged our guilt to reality so we could finally cross over into letting go of past mistakes. This connection is why Lena not only thrives in her career, but why she is the center of the language justice networks on the Central Coast.

“Everything has to work together. Our mission statement talks about equity in the Central Coast and language does that. We tie in the pieces of different programs. Without language, you can’t have conversations.”