I Didn’t Realize I Was Translating My Parents’ Lives Until I Got to College

The first document I ever translated wasn’t homework.

It was a letter from a government office, printed in dense English that made my parents’ shoulders tense the moment they opened it. I was thirteen, sitting at the kitchen table with a dictionary app open, trying to sound confident while silently panicking over words I had never seen before. I didn’t know what “eligibility,” “deductible,” or “termination” really meant—but I knew that getting them wrong could change everything.

In this story, I’ll call myself “R.” R is a first-generation college student in New York City who learned early that language is power—not because a teacher told him so, but because his family needed him to survive.

Before college, translating was something I did automatically. Medical bills arrived with numbers that didn’t make sense. School notices came with deadlines that no one else could decode. Lease agreements showed up full of promises and threats wrapped in formal English. I didn’t understand most of what I was reading, but I understood the responsibility behind it. If I missed something, the consequences weren’t just embarrassment—they were real. Late fees. Missed appointments. Benefits that disappeared without explanation.

By the time I reached college, I thought I had outgrown that role.

I was wrong.

My first semester, I received an email about financial aid verification. It was written in that same cold, complicated language I remembered from childhood. Suddenly I was back at that kitchen table again, except this time the letter had my name on it and a tuition balance attached.

I tried to explain it to my parents.

They nodded, trusting me the way they always had. I wanted to feel proud, but all I felt was pressure. College is supposed to be about becoming independent, but being first-gen means independence looks a lot like becoming the family’s official interpreter for adulthood.

There’s a moment in this story where R is studying for an exam when his phone buzzes.

It’s his mother, asking him to explain a hospital bill that arrived in the mail. He puts his textbook aside and opens the PDF, scanning through paragraphs of jargon he barely understands himself. He’s not angry—just tired in a way that sleep can’t fix.

That moment didn’t happen exactly like that, but the feeling did.

At school, professors encourage us to focus on ourselves, to “prioritize our goals.” They don’t realize how strange that sounds when you’ve spent your life prioritizing everyone else first. When your family depends on you to translate their reality, personal ambition feels selfish.

Some nights, I sit at my desk listening to my family talk in the next room, and I feel like I’m balancing between two worlds. In one, I’m a student trying to build a future. In the other, I’m still the kid translating reality for the people who raised me.

The hardest part isn’t the workload.

It’s the guilt.

Guilt for wanting to study instead of answering another phone call. Guilt for wishing someone else could take over for a night. Guilt for dreaming about a life where I don’t have to explain everything to everyone.

In this story, R finally admits something to himself.

He’s not just learning to code or write essays. He’s learning to carry expectations that never came with instructions. No syllabus teaches you how to tell your parents that you don’t understand a form either. No office hours cover how to translate fear into something manageable.

He keeps breaking down letters line by line. He keeps pretending to understand more than he does. He keeps hoping that someday the language barrier won’t be something he has to bridge alone.

This story isn’t real—but the responsibility inside it is.

If you’ve ever had to translate something important for your family, what was the first document you remember handling on your own?