Translating for your parents at the bank at twelve was real work. Count it, even if nobody called it that.

A twelve-year-old handling a bank conversation is doing something most adults would find difficult: holding two languages at once, managing a stranger’s impatience, and carrying the weight of getting it right for the people you love. Nobody called it work because there was no title and no payment. It still built the skills you now use without noticing.

Put it on the list when you are asked what experience you have. You have interpreted under pressure, dealt with officials and explained hard things to tired people. Say it in those words at an interview, because it is true and almost nobody else has it.