173 Seven-year-old Houda was the child of Moroccan immigrants to Spain. With so many peo- ple in the community working double shifts as farm workers in the fields that surrounded the town, sometimes women cobbled together interpreting teams, consisting of an adult with some proficiency in Spanish and a younger child who could complement the language skills of the adult if older children were not available. The first time Inma (the second author) met Houda at the local pediatrician’s office, she was part of such a team, accompanying two of her female neighbors: A Moroccan woman who had just had a baby and another woman who was doing most of the translation. Houda, however, was not relegated to the sidelines: she was treated as a ratified observer-participant of the interaction; as an apprentice who, additionally, was sometimes consulted when the adults ran into trouble. Beyond exchanges about meaning and childcare, the adult women also engaged Houda in discussions about more pragmatic and strategic dimensions of interpreting work. For example, on another occasion when Inma wit- nessed Houda interpreting, the mother of the child told her: “Although I don’t know Spanish, don’t say I don’t understand.” Gradually, over time, Houda started taking over medical inter- preting tasks by herself, translating instructions about vitamins, weight, proper nutrition, and vaccination schedules with an earnestness at odds with her years. When Marjorie (the first author) met Estela at age 11, Estela’s mother considered her to be “la mano derecha” (“the right hand”) of the family. The oldest of three girls, in a family of migrants from Michoacán, Mexico, to a suburb of Chicago, Estela used her knowledge of English and Spanish to make and answer phone calls, schedule appointments, read the daily mail, run errands, apply for credit, fill out forms, read to her younger sisters, and help them with their homework. Marjorie watched as Estela helped her father fill out an application for credit, interpreted for her mother and her teacher at her conferences, and read stories in translation to her younger sister. Estela often attempted to provide very precise or “verbatim” translations of written texts, perseverating in an attempt to get the words “just right.” Over time, however, like Houda, she took to paraphrasing and summarizing larger segments of text, and to doing things for her family rather than explaining everything to them. Cindy was the child of immigrants from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Each evening after her mother came home from work, they would go through the mail together. Cindy enjoyed this rare one-on-one time with her mother, as they worked together to make sense of written material in English related to household functioning. We were not able to observe Cindy in action, but we listened as she talked proudly about the work she handled as she made phone calls to set up appointments, paid the bills, and helped with family finances. These responsi- bilities gave her a sense of power, as well as an understanding of household economies. She 12. Language brokering and immigrant children’s everyday learning in home and community contexts Marjorie Faulstich Orellana and Inmaculada García-Sánchez EEP_12_PINS_C012_docbook_new_indd.indd 173 EEP_12_PINS_C012_docbook_new_indd.indd 173 30-Aug-23 10:36:47 30-Aug-23 10:36:47