Hispanic Heritage Month: A Latina Founder's Reflection

By Shirley X. Moore, Founder & CEO, Be Moore Interpreting   ·   5 min read

I grew up in a house where the day started in one language and ended in another.

The sound of Spanish in our home was the sound of everything mattering. Arguments about small things. Prayers before dinner. Stories about people I had never met but felt like I knew. Jokes that landed twice, once in the moment and once again three days later when I finally understood the play on words.

Spanish was not a "second language" to me. It was the first sound my heart ever recognized.

It took me a long time to notice that this was not everyone’s experience.

Spanish was not a "second language" to me. It was the first sound my heart ever recognized.

Before I go any further, a small note about words.

The federal government calls this Hispanic Heritage Month. I understand why. It is the name written into the official observance and the phrase most people know. But I want to be honest with you. I am Latina. I am from Latin America. My community is Latino. The word "Hispanic" was a category invented by the U.S. government in the 1970s to gather millions of very different peoples into one manageable checkbox. It is not how any of us describe ourselves at home.

So I will use the official name where it helps you find this piece and know what I am writing about. But when I speak about my people, I will call us what we call ourselves. Latinos. Latinas. From Latin America. From homes where more than one language mattered.

Somewhere along the way, probably in a doctor’s office, or a school lobby, or a courtroom waiting room, or standing in line at a government office, I started to see the other side. Spanish-speaking parents talked around instead of talked to. English-speaking staff smiling politely and speaking louder, as if volume could substitute for translation. Grandmothers who had raised whole families and built whole lives being spoken to like they were children, because they could not find the English word for what they meant.

That was the moment I understood what I was going to do with my life.

I did not know it was called interpreting yet. I did not know it would become a company, or a training program, or a team of people I am now deeply proud to call my colleagues. I just knew that the distance between being spoken about and being spoken with was not fair, and that I could stand in that gap.

Twenty years later, I am still standing in it. And this month, I want to say a few things out loud.

To every Spanish-speaking family who has ever felt small in a room where nobody was listening: you were not the problem. The room was. And there are people building better rooms every day. We are among them.

To every Latina in this profession, the interpreters, the translators, the medical assistants who ended up being the de facto Spanish speakers in their department, the front-office staff who translate the intake form nobody trained you to translate: I see you. This month belongs to you. So does the recognition, so does the pay, and so does the respect. Ask for all three.

To our clients, thank you. Every district, hospital, courtroom, and business that has chosen to invest in language access is choosing to say, in the language of our community, "you belong here." That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

And to my team at Be Moore. Patty. Lovely. Every interpreter and translator on our roster. I could not do this work without you. We are building something that will outlast all of us, and it is because of you.

Spanish, and every other language our community carries, is not a decoration. It is a home.

Latino Heritage Month, because that is what I will call it in my own house, is not just about food and music and flags, though those are beautiful. It is about the quieter, everyday truth that Spanish, and every other language our community carries, is not a decoration. It is a home. It is a mother tongue. It is the voice a child hears when they are being loved.

Our work at Be Moore Interpreting is, in the end, very simple. We are making sure that no one in this country has to leave their language behind to be heard.

That is it. That is the whole thing.

Feliz Mes de la Herencia Latina, from all of us at Be Moore.