One of the most authentic assignments I have given my students is a translation activity with thank you letters. A local church contributes money and volunteers to the Cultural Center of Batahola in Managua, Nicaragua.
At the end of each summer the church receives many thank you letters from the students at the center who benefited from the contributions for the members of the congregation who helped. The writers range in age from primary school children to adults, and their education is also quite varied. Some of the kids are just learning to write, some of the adults are barely literate and some are educated professionals. Most of the recipients of the letters don’t speak Spanish, so one of the church volunteers contacted me a couple years ago about having my Spanish III students translate them.
This year we translated around 80 letters that were assigned to 140 students. Some of the letters were shared by two or three students, and some were assigned to an individual. This was an assignment that had to be done in class because my students needed help reading the handwritten notes. Surprisingly, they were able to figure out most of the content with the help of a dictionary. There were passages that required me to point out the verb in a different tense or explain an idiomatic expression, but generally they did well on their own. My students then typed the translation on a Google Docs document and printed it.
I had about a week to get the letters back to the church. I had enough time to read the translations for accuracy, but my students did not have time to re-write a second draft, and because of this, the translations did have punctuation issues and some awkward phrasing.
Several students commented on how grateful the people at the Batahola Center were, and a few were surprised by how candid some of the writers were about their economic and family circumstances. The most frustrating part for my students was not being able to read some of the handwriting, ironic, considering some of their handwriting :)
I would really like to continue to do this assignment. It helps the church in our local community, while exposing my students to some real people in Nicaragua. The assignment is also a wonderful way for my students to practice their language skills. I think many students were proud of what they were able to do with only a couple of years of Spanish.
