Hearing from our alumna is really gratifying. Here is a wonderful letter to share:

Dear Dr. Rainof,
It is always a pleasure to say hello to you again. I hope that everything is going well for you in the university and with your beautiful family.

We haven’t had a chance to talk about what my life has been since I finished school and I thought that maybe sharing what my
experience has been can help others get motivated to continue their endeavor of finishing this fascinating career. As you may well know thanks to your classes, while I was still in school, I was able to pass the California State Certification Test for Medical Interpreters. This certification opened a whole new world of opportunities for me. I immediately got calls left and right from a great number of agencies. To tell you the truth I had more work than I could handle. The pay was great ranging from $30.00 to $35.00 an hour working mainly for worker’s comp cases, which basically means going to orthopedic medical appointments. At the same time I got a night job at Long Beach Memorial Hospital as a medical interpreter. So, I was working full time during the day doing medical appointments and full time working nights and weekends in the hospital. You can see I was pretty busy. Many students that graduated from CSULB also worked with me: Nick, Aaron, Allison, Salvador, and Maggie.

Not only was I having this great opportunity to catch up on some bills but I was also learning a great wealth of vocabulary and gaining knowledge in the field. Most impressively I was: “Getting paid to brush up on all my interpreting skills”. A great thing that came along with this experience was that I had the chance to interpret in a lot of Psychological and Psychiatric evaluations that took me all the way to Washington D.C. to do a presentation in this years NAJIT conference. The presentation was called “Proverbs in Psychological and Psychiatric Evaluations” and it opened my eyes to the difficulties, beauties, and learning experience of translation research. I was very impressed that many people remembered me from last year’s conference and have a certain feeling that perhaps more will remember me next year after the presentation. It’s a great feeling to meet and make all these interpreter friends from different parts of the country and even more to be recognized as a fellow colleague.

While all this was happening, on the side I was working with some buddies from Long Beach State on an Interpreting/Translating agency. The name of the agency is called Lingua-Franca Language Consultants LLC and can be found on the internet on Lingua-franca.net. We went through a learning experience that took us from working for clinics to doing medical translations for big companies. We currently have a great customer called Care More and recently are working on a $6,000 translation. So for me it’s great work on the side.

I love what I do. Interpreters are well respected and everybody appreciates their service. In Doctor Rainof’s class I had to learn thousands of words and be “exquisitely” tortured but it was well worth the effort. Now I work three 12 hour shifts in CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County) with full benefits and four 8 hour shifts in Long Beach Memorial Hospital. I also do free lance in between and like I said before the translations for Lingua-Franca. You can see that there is a lot of work and opportunities as a certified medical interpreter. I am currently working on my court certification which I know will open even more doors for me.

Again I would like to thank you Doctor Rainof for all the help you have given me because without your help I would have never gone through this great path that has brought so many satisfactions to my life. Best wishes for you, your family, students, and friends.

Yours truly,
Edgar Hidalgo García