Workforce Language Services

With more than 45 million Latinos in the United States and the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasting the ethnic group to account for 30% of the population by 2050, Latinos are now the fastest-growing segment of the population. Restaurants are now targeting the Latino population with Spanish-language signage, marketing campaigns, translated menus and other strategies.

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Immigration reform is one the most controversial political topics today. Let’s face it: any decision made related to immigration crackdowns are going to affect our workforce, where many sectors are based on cheap, unskilled labor that immigrants provide. For better or for worse, how will these crackdowns affect the U.S. workforce?

The New York Times uses Michel Malecot as an example, who is the owner of a small French restaurant in San Diego. He was charged and indicted with charges of employing 12 illegal immigrants. If found guilty, he faces the forfeiture of his restaurant and up to $4 million in fines.

The Obama administration has been getting tough on immigration enforcement laws, which were once considered lax. This year federal employees expect to announce a record number of investigation and fines.

Taking a look at the restaurant industry, 1.4 million workers, both legal and illegal, are foreign-born. “According to 2008 estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, about 20 percent of the nearly 2.6 million chefs, head cooks and cooks are illegal immigrants. Among the 360,000 dishwashers, 28 percent are undocumented, according to the estimates.”

While hiring illegal immigrants may be industry standard, the crackdowns are welcomed from many immigrant rights supporters, who see that illegal immigrants are underpaid and also afraid of complaining to their employers.

It can be complicated business for everyone involved. Employers don’t want the burden of policing their employees when they provide what appears to be legal paperwork, and even electronic verification systems have incorrect information that could turn away eligible workers. Many employers are now petitioning for immigration reform that makes it easier for undocumented workers to gain legal status.

Read the full NYTimes article here.

People all over the world are learning English to increase business opportunities and get better jobs, and China now holds the top place with over 300 million English speakers.

The problem, of course, is that proper English is not often used due to a shortage in trained teachers. Mike Kraft, CEO of Lingo Media Corporation, has a solution: a free, avatar-based program called speak2me.cn that helps correct users’ pronunciation and provides real-life learning scenarios that students can repeat as many times as they like.

This avatar speaks English properly and, through voice recognition software, “listens” to students repeat her words and sentences then makes them verbalize over again until they get it right. There is scoring, contests and prizes.

Students can tap into hundreds of tailor-made modules — about shopping, studying, working, traveling or socializing — that help them practice their pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

The program is free to users but uses advertising and product placement to pay for operations. The site now has 1 million users.

Entrepreneurs like Kraft are smart to tap into the Chinese market. Apart from English speakers, China also boasts the largest number of internet users, with 328 million people online.

Read the full report here in the National Post.

Latin Americans are the fastest growing population of Twitter users in the world, and are engaging in all forms of social media. Marketers who are attempting to access the potentially huge Hispanic market in the U.S. have a tough choice now: Spanish or English?

Andy Checo of Hispanic PR Chat gives his insight into this area. His main idea is this: language is ultimately irrelevant. Companies need to be “in-culture” in order to relate to their target audiences, no matter what the language.

He recommends using English if the majority of your target audience wouldn’t get the cultural message in Spanish. “We all know that if your audience is an acculturate Hispanic they will be able to relate to the bachata group Aventura as they would to Damien Rice, but can your non-Hispanic audience relate to Aventura?”

Use Spanish if your target audience is communicating in Spanish. “Are people commenting in Spanish? Asking you questions in Spanish? If so, why would you choose to communicate back in English?”

Spanglish is also an option, but again, it depends on the needs of your particular audience. Just listen to them!

Read Checo’s full advice post as originally posted on his website here, or reposted on hispanicPRblog here.

As a translation manager, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about mistranslations—everything from the shocking result of companies incorrectly punctuating ‘n’ in ‘año’ (that makes ‘year’ into ‘anus’ in Spanish), from the urban legend about Chevrolet’s “Nova” brand car, the car the wouldn’t go.

At the link below you’ll find a laughable list of translation and localization blunders. If you value your company’s message and want the same idea to come across in another language and culture, a little investigation goes a long way!

Here are just a few examples:

• Coca-Cola tried marketing its domestically successful two liter bottle in Spain. It finally withdrew the bottle from the Spanish market when it discovered that the refrigerator compartments were too small to hold the liter size. (eBook “How to Localize Products for Success in Foreign Markets” by Silk Road Communications.)
• A major soapmaker test marketed a soap name in 50 countries, and what it found was enough to make them change the name. The proposed name meant “dainty” in most European languages, “song” in Gaelic, “aloof” in Flemish, “horse” in one African language, “dim-witted” in Persian, “crazy” in Korean, and was obscene in Slavic languages” (Silk Road Communications eBook)
• When Pepsi began marketing it’s products in China, they were using a slogan that read “Pepsi Brings You Back to Life”. Translated into Chinese however, the slogan meant, “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave” (Business Link West Yorkshire website, www.blwy.co.uk)

Click here to read the full list.

Many Korean immigrants have recently found themselves in the Korean American Resource and Cultural Center taking classes in—what else?—Spanish. People like Sue Choe, who owns a laundromat in Koreatown, see many reasons to learn the language that many of her customers speak.

Aware of an ugly history between Korean-Americans and African-Americans–one that erupted into violence in some cities in the 1990s–Korean business owners are trying to soothe mutual suspicions with Spanish-speaking workers and customers. The effort is mostly born of an increasingly interdependent employer-employee relationship.

It is just one of the ways in which new waves of immigration and intermigration between neighborhoods is fast changing the city, mixing new combinations of ethnic groups together and forcing them to search for ways to coexist as so many previous generations of immigrants did.

Beginning a community dialogue is important, especially recalling the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles. It’s also important because Koreans and Hispanics don’t just live in the same communities, they work together too. Hispanics have become the primary labor pool for Korean business owners, and cultural differences have erupted in the workplace.

Latino workers, many earning less than the minimum wage, complain that their Korean bosses neglect to pay overtime and are often callous about days off or job-related injuries.

In turn Korean owners, at times unfamiliar with U.S. labor laws, see ingratitude and disloyalty in their employees’ complaints. They argue that their up-from-the-ground businesses are a team effort that also has the owners working long hours.

Disputes have hurt both sides.  Learning to understand the cultures around you (and their languages) is a great start. Read the full Chicago Tribune article about this issue here.

Want to learn the languages spoken in your neighborhood? Visit MultilingualChicago.com to learn about language classes and workshops in your area!

A labor group surveyed restaurants in Chicago and found significant segregation between front-of-house workers (waiters, hosts) and back-of-house staff (busboys, dishwashers). The study “found that nearly 80 percent of whites work in the front, nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the back.”

To those of us who have worked in the restaurant business this doesn’t seem like news at all – the discrimination is all too prevalent.  Common all over Chicago’s pubs and steakhouses, we see that “taking the order or seating the clients is the girl next door or a suave older man, most likely white, while a cadre of young Mexican men construct the meal behind the scenes.”

Taking the issue to task, the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago teamed with the Working Hands Legal Clinic to file a federal lawsuit against one Andersonville eatery, claiming that the establishment mistreated its kitchen staff. McCormick and Schmicks’ chain just settled a $1.1 claim from black employees who said they weren’t considered for hosts and servers.

But in the restaurants’ defense, aren’t they hiring based on a special skill set required for that position, not based on race? For example, knowledge of food and wine pairings or simply communicating a food order in English.

I would argue that while restaurants don’t always discriminate blatantly, they rarely train or promote their current back-of-house staff. Wouldn’t a restaurant get better long-term results from a staffer with a long employment history at the restaurant, happy to be promoted, than a new hire? Busboy to server would be the perfect transition, for example.

To read the full report in the Chicago Tribune, click here.

A “cesta” (”basket,” in English) is a lending circle in which 6 to 12 individuals contribute a monthly sum of money, and the pooled funds serve as a credit line for the members involved. It’s a model that’s well known in Latin America, but cestas are only now beginning to pop up in the U.S.

An organization called the Mission Asset Fund (MAF) is helping cestas in California link to the credit market, so that the peer-to-peer groups can establish credit histories. In San Francisco, 44% of households have no credit history at all, and more than half of Latino adults don’t have bank accounts.

“This data is very discouraging,” says MAF executive director José Quiñonez. “But we decided, really our whole approach has been, to try and view the community from a positive perspective, to appreciate what they have, not what they lack, and to build on what they have.”

The cesta banking model has been called a breakthrough, and one that non-profits can replicate.  Members must act democratically to decide how much to contribute, and who has priority to withdraw their credit. Groups are usually founded among family members or circles of friends where there is a high level of trust. “The pressure to obey the agreed rules, however informal, is more social than legal.” The goal for most members is to get out of credit card debt with other lenders, and expand business operations.

To read more about cestas and how they’re growing in Latino communities around the U.S., click here.