Spanish professor and department chair Jeffrey Tadór Reeder is a volunteer translator for the United Nations. Since obtaining formal recognition as a UN Volunteer at the beginning of the pandemic, Reeder has provided his language skills in the service of several important UN projects. Most recently, he translated a policy document from Spanish to English entitled “Cash Transfers and Gender Equality: Improving Effectiveness in Response to Covid-19”, addressing the economic impacts of the pandemic faced by women in Latin America and the Caribbean Region. In addition, he has also volunteered as part of a team translating a national housing policy, and beyond his UN work he has provided several English to Spanish translations of news articles on Covid relief for local news organizations such as La Prensa Sonoma.
Maintaining currency with his translation skills helps Reeder prepare for his advanced upper-division course in Spanish/English translation, a service-learning course which challenges students with real-world translation projects, completed in teams, provided by local non-profit organizations and government agencies. The translation course, and the program it is part of, recognizes SSU’s status as a Hispanic Serving Institution and prepares graduates for careers in which they put language skills to meaningful use while at the same time providing students with valuable experience and recognition for working on important translation projects that will be seen and used by the community.