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2020-03-18
OCHS Alumni Provides COVID-19 Information In Mayan Mam and Spanish Video
Oakland Charter High School alumni, Gerardo Jeronimo Lorenzo, creates crucial COVID-19 informational video for the community. Gerardo Jeronimo Lorenzo, OCHS alum and Medical Translator II at Alameda Health System, enlists the help of Dr. Kate Kasberger and Amalia Pablo Pablo, Mam interpreter at the San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center, to provide vital COVID-19 information in Mam, an indigenous Gautemalan [sic] langauge [sic]. AMPS is so proud of our alum, who despite these tough times, is reaching across the divide to support his community. Go Matadors! -
2021-03-18
Oakland clinic offers Mayan interpreter for COVID-19 vaccinations
Oakland clinic offers Mayan interpreter for COVID-19 vaccinations La Clinica de La Raza is targeting Latin Mam or Mayan-speaking community with translation service Thursdays OAKLAND — A new COVID-19 vaccination clinic in the Fruitvale neighborhood is offering interpreter services for the Latin Mam or Mayan-speaking community. This month, La Clinica de La Raza began offering the community-targeted vaccination service at 32 locations across the Bay Area, including ASCEND Elementary School on East 12th Street, where Latinos who speak Mam, K’iche ‘and Q’eqchi’ can get translation help from appointment to inoculation on Thursdays. There are over 22 different Mam dialects spoken primarily by people of Guatemalan and Mexican descent. According to a recent UC San Francisco study, Mayan people with Guatemalan roots are the fastest-growing ethnic group in Oakland. “I’m here to support my community, getting them the service that they deserve,” Brenda Sucely Perez, the on-site interpreter at ASCEND, said last week while about 450 eligible people were vaccinated. Staff at the Fruitvale site have administered roughly 2,000 Moderna vaccines per week since opening on March 4, according to La Clinica officials. Salvador Garcia, an Oakland firefighter, volunteered at the vaccination clinic. “Coming to get the vaccination is a good thing because it would help prevent the spread,” Garcia said, adding that it’s especially important given how close relatives in the Latino community live. “When you’re around people in such tight quarters around here, the way the families live with each other, it’s just good to have the preventative measure of the vaccination.” It’s also one of the reasons the nation’s first and strictest stay-at-home orders proved ill-suited for the hard-hit Latino community, a four-month Bay Area News Group investigation found. That analysis showed case rates for the region’s Latino residents are nearly four times higher than White residents, while the Latino population has fared worse against the virus across California. During the fall case surge, economic pressure to keep working outside the home became another major factor in the Latino community’s higher COVID-19 positivity rate in the Fruitvale neighborhood than the rest of the state, according to a UCSF study conducted in September. The results of that study found that antibody-positive prevalence was 9.8% overall among people who live and work in Fruitvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood. The number spiked to 26.8% among the Latin Mam, or Mayan, speaking community, USCF [sic] researchers noted. The COVID-antibody test shows that someone once had coronavirus. -
2021-06-25
English, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog COVID signs in SF
On June 25th, I saw this set of posters next to a bathroom in Japan Center, a Japanese shopping center in San Francisco. The posters are in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Tagalog. -
2021-06-27
virALLanguages
virALLanguages is a volunteer-led project that creates COVID safety content in different endangered languages. The project runs a YouTube channel and Facebook page where they post videos with information about COVID in rare languages, and their website also has a collection of downloadable materials in those languages. Beyond translating material, the project also seeks to tailor awareness materials to members of a community to be in touch with the speakers of those languages by using culturally-aware vocabulary and figures of speech. The attached URIs contain, in order: 1: The main page of the website 2: All of the videos the project has made, including YouTube links and downloadable videos, on the project website 3: An Internet Archive page with the videos the project has made -
2021-06-18
A Linguistic Tour through Arthur Avenue
I traveled to New York this summer, and one of the places I visited was Arthur Avenue, located in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx and the main artery of the Bronx's Little Italy. Arthur Avenue provided a unique insight into the function of immigrant languages during the pandemic. Most of the people I heard talking as I walked down Arthur Avenue and went into the stores were speaking English, as would be expected in most of the United States. Some had an accent similar to a "standard" American accent/my Californian accent, while others spoke in New Yorker accents. I heard some people speaking Italian, mostly if not entirely elderly people, in several stores, including Cerini Coffee and Gifts. I also heard expression of language through music, in the form of a speaker in front of Mario's Restaurant playing "Tu vuò fà l'Americano" ("You Want to Be an American") and "O Sarracino" ("The Saracen"), two famous Neapolitan language songs. I didn't expect to hear music in Italian "dialect" (called so even though Neapolitan is a proper stand-alone language). However, Belmont is no longer just Little Italy. It also has a large Albanian presence. I saw a flyer on a street pole in Albanian which I presume to either be a missing sign or a flyer for a funeral. I have no idea what the flyer said because I don't know Albanian, but among the text were two pictures of an elderly man. In front of Randazzo's Seafood, I also saw a sign advertising some type of shellfish (I can't remember which) in Albanian and English, though not in Italian, which I thought was interesting since the store is owned by the grandchildren of immigrants from Sicily. There was also an Albanian television provider called TV ALB, which indicated to me that there are enough Albanian speakers in the area to sustain an Albanian-language cable or broadcast provider, even during the pandemic. I didn't hear any spoken Albanian. This could be a purely anecdotal observation, but I saw Italian primarily as a spoken language and Albanian primarily in writing. There was some writing in Italian, but most of it was either names of food items that couldn't be translated into English or sayings like "mangia bene vivi bene" ("eat well, live well", as a command; the picture of which is attached to this story) for promotional purposes. There was no actual communication occurring in written Italian. On a non-linguistic note, most of the restaurants also had outdoor seating under canopies, a consequence of COVID. -
2021-03-21
Section 11004 of H.R.1319 - American Rescue Plan Act of 2021
Section 11004 of H.R.1319 - American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 reads: SEC. 11004. COVID–19 RESPONSE RESOURCES FOR THE PRESERVATION AND MAINTENANCE OF NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES. (a) Section 816 of the Native American Programs Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 2992d) is amended by adding at the end the following: “(f) In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is appropriated for fiscal year 2021, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $20,000,000 to remain available until expended, to carry out section 803C(g) of this Act.”. (b) Section 803C of the Native American Programs Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 2991b–3) is amended by adding at the end the following: “(g) Emergency Grants For Native American Language Preservation And Maintenance.—Not later than 180 days after the effective date of this subsection, the Secretary shall award grants to entities eligible to receive assistance under subsection (a)(1) to ensure the survival and continuing vitality of Native American languages during and after the public health emergency declared by the Secretary pursuant to section 319 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d) with respect to the COVID–19 pandemic.”.