Volunteer translators in this community get asked for two completely different jobs, and the second one is never priced, never prepared for and never discussed enough.
- Documents. Registers, home records, court letters. Slow, technical, and you can check what you wrote.
- The first call. Two people, one history, no shared language, and a third voice who is not allowed to be a participant.
Elin learned Farsi for her daughter and stayed with it. Her rules are worth taking: say nothing in the first ten minutes that is not a translation; stop the call if you become the person answering; write down what you were not sure about immediately afterwards, because a phrase you guessed at becomes someone’s memory.
If you are searching in Farsi for the first time
The exchange runs short classes on exactly the vocabulary a search needs — a register office, a guardianship letter, a home admission note — rather than a general course. If you have been waiting two years for an appointment with a translator, that vocabulary gets you most of the way there yourself.