Students at the Alternative Education Center in Odessa, TX, joined the International Translation Day celebration on September 30, 2020. Through the leadership of Ms. Sandra Inman, AEC Spanish teacher, students translated the facility's mural that states, "Believe you can" into the language of their choice. They made a poster of their translation using international languages such as Spanish, Bengali, and Filipino, reflecting the diversity of the facility's staff. After creating their posters, students wrote an essay responding to the prompt: Does knowing different languages improve our quality of education? The prompt allowed the students to voice their observations, ideas, and opinions about quality education as one of the global sustainable development goals. Some areas the students explained as benefits of knowing more than one language were work marketability, travel, and studying abroad. One student commented that Spanish is one of the foreign languages that need to be learned because, aside from the fact the many countries speak Spanish, the Latino population in the U.S. and Canada is increasing. All students believed that knowing different languages improve our quality of education; however, they said intelligence and smartness can be any language.
Multilingualism is a core value of the United Nations. The International Translation Day has been celebrated every September 30 of the year since 2005 to commemorate the feast of St. Jerome, the Bible translator considered the patron saint of translators. The U.N. annually conducts a global translation contest called U.N. St. Jerome Translation Contest. The contest rewards the best translations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and German and aims to celebrate multilingualism.
