Roxana Salcedo-Sotelo grew up around languages. She would hear English cartoons playing on her TV as a little girl. The sound of the language spoke to her.

“I just love the sound of the English language,” Señora Salcedo said.

Coming from a family of educators, Salcedo didn’t want to teach right off the bat.

“I wanted to pursue a career in anything that involved languages,” Salcedo said.

She was looking at two options: becoming a teacher, or being a translator and interpreter. Not wanting to become an educator yet, she “went to pursue a translator and interpreter route,” Salcedo said.

She went on to join Aviation at around 20. Starting off so young, most of the employees were much older than her.

“They think that because you’re young, you don’t know enough,” Salcedo said. “So that was, I think, a challenging part for me.”

Gaining self-confidence played a big role in how she did her work. While in Aviation, she met a partner she could team up with. Her now husband was in active-duty military when she met him.

“He made me appreciate the love, the passion, for aviation that he does have,” Salcedo said.

He helped her with her vocabulary since Aviation is a field where one needs to be very specific in his or her wording.

While translating documents, she would need to do so in a way where it wouldn’t read as a translation.

“It’s like an art,” Salcedo said.

Interpreting requires focus. If the interpreter has a lapse and forgets words, that’s when it becomes challenging, she says.

After four years, she and her husband moved to Jacksonville. That’s when she took a break from her career, and put her focus on her family. When her two sons began school, she began working in education.

She taught in college, as a tutor, teaching English to those who had a difficult time understanding the language. Her family being educators also helped encourage her to make that push.

Being a translator has helped Salcedo both outside the classroom and the Aviation field. Running into a woman struggling to speak English in the airport, she stepped up to help.

“It made me feel really well knowing that I was able to help someone,” Salcedo said.

That incident made her think of her mother. Reaching more people is a big thing for her, she says. She believes knowing another language can help you connect with many different people.

When teaching, Señora Salcedo calls on students and talks them through each question they have. She finds different ways to apply the material she’s teaching and ways to get non-native speakers to engage in Spanish class, and to help the lesson stick.

“I even get the chills when those students come and ask me questions,” Salcedo said.