“Willkommen, Deutschland!” PCC German Club Serves As Interpreters For Special Olympics Athletes

The boom of the drumline and blare of the brass section reverberated across the gymnasium as a hundred or so Special Olympics athletes from across the Atlantic – all decked in red and dark blue – paraded in scattered lines through double doors. Somewhere in the middle of all the commotion, Kateland Reynante stood and breathed in the stirring moment.

“It was a little overwhelming,” said the Pasadena City College sophomore. “It was really touching and I’m proud and excited to have shared it with them.”

It’s not often that a PCC student gets a chance to shadow a large delegation of Special Olympics athletes. But for Reynante and 10 other student-members of PCC’s Germania Culture Club, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing in the last week. The Lancers served as volunteer language interpreters for a 200-member group of competitors and coaches from Germany.

This week, that same group will be competing alongside 164 other countries at the 2015 Special Olympics World Games in Los Angeles. More than 6,500 athletes will be participating in 25 different sports at venues around Southern California, including USC and UCLA.

Cal State Los Angeles last Friday hosted a pep rally for the German contingent inside the campus gymnasium. The event, highlighted by performances from the Mark Keppel High School band and San Gabriel High School cheer and drill teams, served as a rousing send-off for the athletes as they made their way to last Saturday’s opening ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The games conclude Aug. 2.

“Without a doubt, I will remember this experience for the rest of my life,” said Olivia Bueno, Germania Culture Club president who also attended the rally.

How do you say guacamole in German?

PCC’s involvement with the Special Olympics began last semester, when the City of Alhambra approached the Germania Culture Club and asked for volunteers to serve as interpreters for the German team. Alhambra was one of as many as 100 Southern California communities designated by the Special Olympics committee to serve as “host towns” for the athletes. From July 21 to 24, Alhambra and the cities of Monterey Park and Lincoln Heights treated the Germans to three days of recreation, entertainment, and cultural exchange.

Some of the activities included a tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and a “Party in the Park” community celebration in Alhambra featuring live music and entertainment.

“It was cool to finally use my German for something,” said Carlos Fabila, a sophomore computer science major.

To prepare for the task of interpreting for the athletes during those few days, the student volunteers practiced the language frequently over the summer – even booking study rooms on campus, locking the doors, and setting time limits in which no English would be spoken.

“We would ask each other questions in German and all of us would put together our knowledge of the language and come up with best answer,” said Abraham Marino, a freshman English major.

Although most of the volunteers’ proficiencies in German range from mostly basic to conversational, Bueno’s is spot on. That’s because she has a bachelor’s degree in German.

“We all know formal German and more complex sentence structures,” Bueno said. “But we mainly had to learn simple sentence structures for the athletes. It was helpful because some of our levels of competencies in German are different.”

For those who needed the help, flash cards came in handy. Though common phrases like willkommen and gern geschehen – “welcome” and “our pleasure” in English, respectively – were easy enough to remember and required no cheat sheets.

But how exactly do you say guacamole in German?

“It’s guacamole,” said Marion Eisenmann, a native of Ingolstadt, Germany who now lives in Pasadena and served as a volunteer for the games.

While at Alhambra’s “Party in the Park,” the Germans were introduced to America’s newest pastime: the food truck. Although she wasn’t a part of the PCC group, Eisenmann was kind enough to help navigate the student volunteers through the difficult waters of interpreting the Mexican and American menus.

“We sat down and took the menus apart,” Eisenmann recalled. “Some of the words were new to them, but they all did pretty well.”

One of the more uncommon food terms to learn was the “slider.”

“It’s fleischpflänzchen,” Eisenmann said with a flourish. “Or smaller size meat patties.”

Gern Geschehen

After the pep rally at CSULA, the PCC students spent more time with the athletes before sending them off to the games. The buses were delayed, and the students helped make the stay a little more comfortable by setting up an impromptu pizza feast for the German contingent.

“By far this was the greatest opportunity to get to know them better,” Bueno said. “We learned a lot, such as they would’ve loved to have visited Hollywood, the Walk of Fame, and the Hollywood sign if they had the opportunity.”

Through a cell phone, the students also showed some of the athletes PCC’s website and a few pictures of the college campus. “Their impression was that it was a wealthy school and that it looked sehr schoen or ‘very beautiful.’ ”

Bueno and the other PCC volunteers ended up staying with the Germans for a better part of the afternoon. Their efforts didn’t go unnoticed.

“It was a great experience for me,” said golfer Sarah Rinkowitz through a translator. “I met a lot of new people and I loved spending time with them.”

“The whole experience was incredible and overwhelming,” said Bradley Kerr, head coach of the German team. “They made us all feel very welcomed. We could’ve all gone home [from the pep rally], and we still would’ve had a memorable time.”

After the athletes were whisked away from the campus, the German delegation representatives had to wait a little longer before their shuttles arrived.

“We waved them goodbye. They were very thankful and told us we had done a really good job,” Bueno said. “To which we replied: gern geschehen.”

For more information on the German delegation and the Special Olympics World Games 2015, visit la2015.org.