Our Interpreters

My name is Debra Garcia, from Cebu, a beautiful island in the central part of the Philippines. Filipinos who are not born in Manila, the capital city, speak different languages, and in my case, I speak Cebuano-Visayan. But since the National Language of the Philippines is Filipino (the same word for our nationality), which is actually based on the Tagalog language, Filipinos speak Tagalog as well. I immigrated to Canada in September of 2017, and I am currently working as a phone interpreter with CanTalk, and as a court and medical interpreter for Westman Immigrant Services in Brandon, Manitoba.

I will start my story from the time when I discovered and started loving the word “interpreter” and that was when I was 10 years old. You might have heard that Filipinos are fanatics of the 3 Bs: Basketball, Beauty Pageants, and Boxing, and it’s in the second B where I started to dream big. I can’t really say that I am one of the typical girls who get amazed by how beauty queens walk with their crowns because I was only interested with the Question-and-Answer Portion of the pageants. I love how the candidates answer the questions especially when they answer in their own native languages because, of course, the interpreters will be there, standing beside them. For me, the interpreters in pageants are more mesmerizing compared to the candidates themselves, and I did not know why. So, whenever my friends and I were playing pretend pageants, I always just had 2 roles: the host, or the interpreter!

There are no interpreter jobs in the Philippines because Filipinos speak English as it is our second official language. I kind of forget about my dream of becoming an interpreter since I thought this job only exist in pageants. But that did not stop me from loving the languages I speak. In school, my teachers always told me that my English was impressive, and my Tagalog is superb. They said that I could become a news anchor or even a lawyer because I speak well. I did not become one of these two because there was no way that my parents could afford these courses. This is not a sad ending though, since I became a teacher and I taught English in 2 of the state universities in the Philippines. Just so you know, Filipinos are very proud that we can speak English. We consider this as one of our assets to become globally competitive. This is the reason why we never had to send interpreters during the international pageants, and call centers are huge in the Philippines!

When I came here to Canada, I was ecstatic when I learned that interpreters are always part of the services provided to immigrants. I finally got my childhood dream! I may not interpret in beauty pageants, but hey, I get to interpret in courts, hospitals, and wherever in the community!