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| Yo
quiero 'Lingo Guide' |
By Chris
Lewis, clewis@nashvillecitypaper.com
June 08,
2005
|
Contractor Ed White
practices his Spanish with the aid of the Lingo
Guide for Builders, a phrase book he authored
to help those in the construction trades better
communicate with Hispanic workers such as Felipe
Colazo. Photo by Chris Lewis.
| As a construction contractor
in the Nashville area, E.G. "Ed" White has come to rely
on his hands not just for wielding the saw, hammer and
drill, but also for conversation.
The growing
number of Spanish-speaking workers on his crew has
required White to communicate the best he can with hand
gestures and slow, deliberate speech, which can waste
precious time when there's a job to be
done.
White parlayed his frustration with the
language barrier into a business opportunity. He's
self-published a book that helps contractors translate
common construction commands and phrases into Spanish -
with a Spanish-to-English version included as
well.
Since the first 500 copies of Lingo
Guide for Builders came off the presses a couple of
weeks ago, many of White's acquaintances in the industry
have been very receptive to the book, said his
publicist, Brenna Davenport-Leigh, owner of Hellbender
Marketing.
"They want to take the book and look
at it, and there's a great curiosity about it because
it's something that's so needed," she said.
In
the U.S. construction industry, foreign-born Hispanics
make up almost 20 percent of the work force, according
to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C. A Pew
report released last month stated that 226,000 immigrant
Hispanics were added to the construction industry
payroll in 2004, amounting to 40 percent of the total
growth in employment of 571,000 in the industry that
year.
It was not research but instinct that
guided White. The Leipers Fork resident has seen the
need for language assistance firsthand while remodeling
homes in the Nashville area over the past 15
years.
"The idea came when I was working in East
Nashville. I was doing an upstairs and the framing crew
there was all Hispanic," he said. "I went home one day
and asked [his wife] Tina if she'd make up something so
I could yak at these folks."
After they developed
a small cheat sheet, the light bulb went on: Though
there are numerous English-Spanish dictionaries and
phrase guides, why not develop one specifically for the
construction trade?
White and his wife labored
over the book for four years, gathering more than 600
words and 550 common construction phrases. They
translated them into Spanish - and included phonetic
pronunciations - with the help of Diana Holland, owner
of Hispanic Links Consulting in Nashville.
"When
we first started, there was not much to this book. It
was a little old itty-bitty thing. Since that point,
we've said, 'Let's just make a nice book.' A lot of
money and time has gone into this thing," White
said.
The 150-page, spiral-bound, pocket-sized
guide is organized by loose categories, such as
demolition/cleanup, dry wall, electrical, masonry,
plumbing and roofing.
Readers are guided through
phrases ranging from the conversational, "How are you
today?" ("Cómo está usted hoy?"), to more specific
commands, such as "We need to mix more mortar" ("Debemos
mezclar más argamasa").
White isn't the first
person to seize upon language hurdles as a business
opportunity. Over the past 10 years, Alicia Hinson has
built a business - Optimum Translation Services - in
Nashville offering translation assistance and practical,
short-term language classes.
Hinson said a quick
trip to a local bookstore will turn up a wide variety of
language guides to aid non-native speakers in a variety
of industries.
"There is a lot of material out
there. It's not one-of-a-kind," she said of the Lingo
Guide for Builders.
But Bruce Hancock,
president of the Home Builders Association of Middle
Tennessee, said he hasn't seen a guide as complete as
White's directed specifically to the construction
trades. He believes there's a market for it.
"I
can definitely see a need for those who really want to
prepare themselves better to communicate," he
said.
The guide also has a fan in Yuri Cunza,
president of the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce.
"It's a lot of work. I'm so impressed
that it's a local effort," Cunza said. "It's showing in
a way how Nashville is changing, how it's growing, the
direction [the town is] taking. Instead of finding
obstacles, you're finding solutions to make things
easier."
More information is available at www.thelingoguide.com. |
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