Found in Translation

Embarrasse d to Be Embarazada
Many English speakers have the poor habit of adding an “o” or an “a” to English words in the hopes
they might be guessing the correct word in Spanish. It’s always a source of laughter for Spanish
speakers when a male English speaker wants to say, “I’m embarrassed” and ends up saying, “Estoy
embarazado.” The word embarazada means pregnant. Saying, “Estoy embarazado” implies that
one is both pregnant and male. The best way to completely avoid gender confusion? Say Tengo
vergüenza (which literally means “I have shame”) instead.
A Meatpacking Mystery
On a daily basis, interpreters provide services that save the lives of individual
patients, but occasionally, their services can affect the health of an entire
population. That’s the case of Carol Hidalgo, an interpreter at the Mayo Clinic,
who helped solve a medical mystery, preventing a public health scare in the
process.
In the summer of 2007, Hidalgo paused to speak with a family practitioner,
Dr. Richard Schindler, in the hallway. She had noticed that several of the
patients she had been interpreting for—all of whom were seen by different

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doctors—had been complaining of similar symptoms. They had been reporting
that their legs were feeling numb and weak. The patients had something else in
common, too. They all worked at the same pork-processing plant in
Minnesota.
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Dr. Schindler tracked down the providers who had treated patients Hidalgo
had interpreted for and quickly spotted similarities between the different cases.
Within a week of investigating the matter, he learned that Hidalgo’s hunch had
been correct. There were eleven cases with patients who had the same
symptoms.
Calls to the neurologists at the Mayo Clinic followed. Even though the
doctors were colleagues, none of them had seen more than one or two cases of
individuals with these symptoms. Hidalgo, the interpreter, had worked with
several cases and could more easily recognize the pattern.
The major cause for concern was that these employees worked at a
meatpacking plant, but the illness did not fit with the typical injuries that
pervade the meatpacking industry, such as those that stem from repetitive
motion. In the United States, where food is produced and distributed en masse,
an illness among workers at a food-processing plant can quickly spread.
Health officials take such issues very seriously. At the same time, sending out
warnings can create panic among consumers unnecessarily and jeopardize an
entire industry.
After researching the matter further, scientists and factory staff pinpointed
the source of the symptoms. Workers at the factory had been evacuating skulls
and liquefying swine brains using high-pressure compressed air. This
procedure resulted in the brains being aerosolized into a fine mist. The
workers did not use a face shield, but sometimes (not always) wore eye
goggles, so the particles were inhaled and made contact with their skin. Once
the foreign particles entered the body, they seemed to attack the patients’ nerves
and destroy the fatty sheath known as myelin. With the myelin damaged, the
nerves were getting injured.
As a result of the discovery, the Minnesota pork-processing plant—and
others throughout the country—stopped liquefying swine brains. Some of the
workers with milder symptoms were able to resume their normal activities.
Those with more severe symptoms needed chronic treatment due to the
damage already done to the myelin.
Had Hidalgo not thought to report the pattern she observed as an interpreter,
the number of workers whose health was compromised could have easily
doubled, tripled, or worse. And while the root of the problem was not actually
cause for a public health scare, this example clearly demonstrates that, in the

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context of global health pandemics, overcoming language barriers can be a
matter of life and death.