The client is a woman with chronic pain, and Mendoza is the interface between patient and therapist. Those are always tricky questions. In a medical setting, she adds, the interpreter has to stay tuned to the patient's facial expressions as the physician pokes and probes. Mendoza put that to the test in the delivery room, where she inter- preted for doctor and mother during childbirth. She has also worked in courtrooms, in business offices and in warehouses, and signed at weddings, funerals and, for someone who knows no Hebrew, a couple of bat mitzvahs.
Funerals are hard to interpret.
We're supposed to match the intent of the speaker, but you can't add your own emotions. A leather contest. I've interpreted a lot of job terminations, and I almost got slugged in a mental health setting. She also worked at the Republican National Convention, and signed talks by political figures that included House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Mendoza, a third-generation San Diegan, grew up in Allied Gardens and still lives in the neighborhood.