AN interpreter has been called into the classroom to help two Japanese sisters settle into their new school.

Translator Kumiko Hopkinson is working with Rikako and Saori Kamamoto to help them to break through the language barrier.

The sisters, who hail from Gunma, about an hour outside of Tokyo, arrived in Hartlepool, on Teesside, when their father took up a five-year posting at Peterlee's Japanese NSK plant, and set up home in Seaton Carew.

The girls, aged four and six, go to Hartlepool's Fens Primary School, and are getting a helping hand from tutor Kumiko, who has lived in the North-East for ten years.

Fens School headteacher, Margaret Bousfield, said: "The children have coped extremely well considering they came here with no English."