Tweet
Vietnamese fishermen in Gulf fight to not get lost in translation
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>cnnAuthor = "By Jessica Ravitz, CNN";</SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>if(location.hostname.indexOf( 'edition.' ) > -1) {document.write('June 25, 2010 -- Updated 1824 GMT (0224 HKT)');} else {document.write('June 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDT');}</SCRIPT>June 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDTJune 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDT
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) ? The lengthy documents they initially were asked to sign used language even a native English speaker would struggle to understand.
The Vietnamese interpreters BP first brought in for safety and cleanup training stirred painful memories and suspicions because they spoke to the elders with a North Vietnamese dialect and used what some described as ?Communist terminology.?
The closings of fishing areas have been announced on radio stations these fishermen don?t follow, so some have piloted their boats where they shouldn?t, which means tickets from the Coast Guard keep coming.
For the Vietnamese-Americans living in the Gulf Coast region, the oil disaster is especially complicated. It?s made murky by language barriers, cultural misunderstandings and a history of challenges that have shaped them for more than half a century.
Their ties to seafood run deep and wide. A third of all fishermen in the Gulf are Vietnamese, making them arguably the most affected minority out there. More than 24,000 people of Vietnamese origin live in Louisiana, according to the last completed census. About 6,000 live within a two-mile radius in the neighborhood of New Orleans East ? distinguishing it, the area?s priest says, as the greatest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam.
In the rectory of Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, the Rev. Vien Nguyen sits in front of an altar to his ancestors and his Catholic faith. Religious texts in English and his native tongue fill the high shelves around him, as do books bearing titles like ?Freshwater Crayfish Aquaculture,? ?The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine? and Franz Kafka?s ?The Trial.?
Here, he introduces some of the Kafkaesque oil-disaster trials facing his own people.
He talks about their distrust of lawyers ? ?sharks,? he calls them ? who?ve come in from out of state, circling them with promises and confusing papers. He mentions the mental health concerns ? depression, lack of sleep, tensions in homes ? that need to be addressed, a task made difficult by an absence of Vietnamese-speaking therapists in a community that still stigmatizes admissions of emotional trouble. He worries about the lack of job training and opportunities for a people who?ve worked in an industry that may suffer for God knows how long.
?These are proud, active people who contribute to their own livelihood, and now they have to be in lines,? asking for handouts, he says. ?It is a devastating blow.?
About 80 percent of Vietnamese-Americans in the Gulf region are connected to the seafood industry through jobs that include fishing, shucking oysters, packing shrimp, and running stores and restaurants, the priest and others say.
The work they do is something many brought with them from fishing villages in their native land, a place most of them fled as ?boat people? after the 1975 fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. That departure was for many the second time they?d become refugees. They?d already uprooted themselves and started over with nothing in 1954, when their country divided into North and South and they, as the Catholic minority living in Vietnam, ran from the Communist rule that took over the North.
.../
By Jessica Ravitz, CNN<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>cnnAuthor = "By Jessica Ravitz, CNN";</SCRIPT>
<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>if(location.hostname.indexOf( 'edition.' ) > -1) {document.write('June 25, 2010 -- Updated 1824 GMT (0224 HKT)');} else {document.write('June 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDT');}</SCRIPT>June 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDTJune 25, 2010 2:24 p.m. EDT
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) ? The lengthy documents they initially were asked to sign used language even a native English speaker would struggle to understand.
The Vietnamese interpreters BP first brought in for safety and cleanup training stirred painful memories and suspicions because they spoke to the elders with a North Vietnamese dialect and used what some described as ?Communist terminology.?
The closings of fishing areas have been announced on radio stations these fishermen don?t follow, so some have piloted their boats where they shouldn?t, which means tickets from the Coast Guard keep coming.
For the Vietnamese-Americans living in the Gulf Coast region, the oil disaster is especially complicated. It?s made murky by language barriers, cultural misunderstandings and a history of challenges that have shaped them for more than half a century.
Their ties to seafood run deep and wide. A third of all fishermen in the Gulf are Vietnamese, making them arguably the most affected minority out there. More than 24,000 people of Vietnamese origin live in Louisiana, according to the last completed census. About 6,000 live within a two-mile radius in the neighborhood of New Orleans East ? distinguishing it, the area?s priest says, as the greatest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam.
In the rectory of Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, the Rev. Vien Nguyen sits in front of an altar to his ancestors and his Catholic faith. Religious texts in English and his native tongue fill the high shelves around him, as do books bearing titles like ?Freshwater Crayfish Aquaculture,? ?The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine? and Franz Kafka?s ?The Trial.?
Here, he introduces some of the Kafkaesque oil-disaster trials facing his own people.
He talks about their distrust of lawyers ? ?sharks,? he calls them ? who?ve come in from out of state, circling them with promises and confusing papers. He mentions the mental health concerns ? depression, lack of sleep, tensions in homes ? that need to be addressed, a task made difficult by an absence of Vietnamese-speaking therapists in a community that still stigmatizes admissions of emotional trouble. He worries about the lack of job training and opportunities for a people who?ve worked in an industry that may suffer for God knows how long.
?These are proud, active people who contribute to their own livelihood, and now they have to be in lines,? asking for handouts, he says. ?It is a devastating blow.?
About 80 percent of Vietnamese-Americans in the Gulf region are connected to the seafood industry through jobs that include fishing, shucking oysters, packing shrimp, and running stores and restaurants, the priest and others say.
The work they do is something many brought with them from fishing villages in their native land, a place most of them fled as ?boat people? after the 1975 fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. That departure was for many the second time they?d become refugees. They?d already uprooted themselves and started over with nothing in 1954, when their country divided into North and South and they, as the Catholic minority living in Vietnam, ran from the Communist rule that took over the North.
.../
Comment