Nathan Martin
Translator Mixtec & Spanish Team
“I love being able to help asylum seekers. By translating their documents into English, immigration judges will have a clear understanding of what they have experienced. Hopefully they will use the information to grant asylum to people who are in danger. I like to help because I think that most reasonable people, if they heard from asylum seekers in their own words, would want to protect them. I want asylum seekers to be heard, and I can do that through translation.”
Nathan Martin translates Mixtec and Spanish and lives in northwest Washington where many people speak Mixtec or Spanish, which is why he chose to learn those two languages. Nathan recently graduated from nursing school and is looking forward to starting work in emergency medicine as a nurse at his local hospital where where he currently work as a staff interpreter. In his free time he likes to go out into the mountains with friends or work on projects such as Mixtec literacy and language maintenance.
Nathan tells us that many people have not heard of Mixtec or assume that because it is from Mexico that it must be a variety of Spanish, and in fact, Mixtec is a Native American language and has existed in Mexico long before Spaniards brought the Spanish language.
When asked why he loves being part of the Respond team, Nathan shares, “I love being able to help asylum seekers. By translating their documents into English, immigration judges will have a clear understanding of what they have experienced. Hopefully they will use the information to grant asylum to people who are in danger. I like to help because I think that most reasonable people, if they heard from asylum seekers in their own words, would want to protect them. I want asylum seekers to be heard, and I can do that through translation.”
Nathan is justifyibly proud of the research he does for each case. He says, “For example, in one case a teenage child from Colombia was threatened by drug traffickers. I researched slang and jargon used by that subculture to be able to accurately translate the threats that he had received. I wanted the judge to feel the true emotional impact of what had happened to this child.” We appreciate the compassionate care Nathan takes with all of his cases.
Nathan tells us how he began learning Mixtec. “When I first started learning Mixtec, the only thing I knew how to say was ‘chair.’ One woman would have me over to her place and felt bad for me because all I could say was ‘chair.’ She started to teach me other words and eventually whole sentences. We ended up becoming close friends and she continues to guide me on linguistic and cultural issues in working with the Mixtec community.”
Nathan’s favorite word in any language is, Yánká, which means - complicated, difficult. “It’s when people are being ridiculous or situations are just weird or it’s more drama than a person really wants to get into. Yánká kúú-a̠. It’s just complicated.” Yánká sounds like a word for these times.
