Workforce Language Services

Language Lines is often mentioned in articles about strategies for working around language barriers.  But this particular article about Pasco County’s demographic shift shows the impact that Language Line has had on communicating with non-English speakers at County offices. 

The article also provides a brief history of Language Lines Services and how heavily it’s currently being used:

Language Line Services, based in Monterey, Calif., has been around since 1984. The company’s first client was the police department in San Jose, and it has had cops and courts as clients ever since. Language Line now has approximately 25,000 clients, according to spokesman Dale Hansman, including hospitals, airports, grocery stores, credit card companies and 75 percent of the Fortune 500 companies. The company has 5,000 translators who speak 176 languages.

The economy is hurting. Not Language Line. Language Line is growing. The number of calls is going up. The number of clients is going up.

“It’s not a novelty,” Hansman said last week. “It’s a necessity.”

In Pasco, public transportation uses language line, the libraries use it, the 911 call center uses it, the sheriff’s office uses it.

To read the entire article from the St. Petersburg Times, click here.

The Grand Island Independent profiled National Guardsman Adrian Velez, who serves as one of two Hispanic liasions in Nebraska.  Through community outreach, he attempts to diffuse some of the fear and suspicion many Latinos, legal and illegal, have of people in uniform, especially if that uniform is tied to law enforcement. 

“There is a misconception of the National Guard,” Velez said. “People see the uniform, and (as guardsmen) we’re misperceived as part of a legal system putting people in jeopardy. People also think we just do the war thing.”

He uses those moments to tell people about the Guard’s domestic missions, such as helping with disaster relief, he said.

Velez attends school-related events, swings into Hispanic community cultural centers and attends meetings. He talks to people about the Guard and answers questions wherever he can.

The article also speaks about Velez’s outgoing and kind personality, which definitely allows him to connect with people and show them the man behind the uniform.  Because of his personality, he’s found that he’s made inroads with the Latino community and has been able to help families make more informed decision about whether involvement in the National Guard is right for them.

A Wisconsin Law Journal article nicely outlines the process for becoming a certified court interpreter.  Dawn Maldonado shares her experience in becoming an interpreter:

It took Maldonado several months to crack the regular rotation of interpreters in Milwaukee and she along with others involved in the profession suggest that while the “freelance” job can be lucrative, it takes more than a bilingual tongue to succeed.

“It is your own business and it is up to you to (find) your clients and make them happy,” said Maldonado, who has provided Spanish interpretation since 2001. “But I think it is tough and a lot of people fall off because they don’t understand the legalese, which is a big part of the job.”

This article points out a few of the stumbling blocks to becoming a Spanish-English court interpreter: there are far more Spanish-English interpreters in Wisconsin than there are cases; many candidates will need advanced study in not only interpreting but also legal terminology; and the freelancing aspect of the work may make it difficult to make a living interpreting.

I’m pleased to see Wisconsin’s certification process clearly described.  I also find it refreshing that this article is a bit more tempered than others that I’ve seen, many of which make it seem that there is an unfilled need for Spanish-English court interpreters.

Click here for the entire article.

A recent Chattanooga Times Free Press article discusses the barriers to accessing the services of financial institutions for Latinos, 56 percent of whom are currently “unbanked”:

Building trust between the community and financial institutions is one of the main priorities of those working with Hispanics, financial officials say.

“We want them to trust financial institutions so they will feel comfortable coming to our credit union and eventually to other institutions,” said Stacy Johnson, Hispanic member development director with the Holston Methodist Federal Credit Union.

From June 2007 through the end of October 2008, the credit union opened 191 accounts, most for Hispanic clients, Mrs. Johnson said.

But the increase of Hispanic clients at other banks has not been as dramatic, said Keith Sanford, executive vice president with First Tennessee Bank.

The article states that First Tennessee Bank started offering Spanish classes to its staff, providing translated materials, and hiring bilingual staff in an effort to reach more Hispanics.  But to truly overcome the trust issues that make many Latinos wary of banks, these institutions need to do more community outreach and one-on-one financial literacy.  And even more important, when providing financial literacy education to new customers, institutions should be very careful about not pushing their products and services under the guise of educating. 

To read the entire article, click here.

The YMCA is nothing short of a community institution in many cities and towns.  I’ve long been a member of an urban YMCA because of the wonderfully diverse and accepting environment.  While at my YMCA, visitors mostly hear Cape Verdean Creole, English, and Spanish, the Allston-Brighton YMCA in Boston has members from dozens of countries. 

A recent Boston.com article talks about cultural misunderstandings and celebration of diversity at this Y.  The article opens with an amusing incident in the steam room that resulted in cultural lessons and deepened understanding between members and staff:

Shortly after Jack Fucci became executive director of the Allston-Brighton Y, he found himself embroiled in a tempest in a steam room. 

In the tradition of their homeland, some Russian-born members were sweating it out in the nude. They would no more wear a bathing suit in the steam room than in the shower. Y rules, however, require a bathing suit, not for reasons of modesty - the sexes are separated - but of hygiene.

Fucci tried explaining that to the Russians. Using an Internet program to translate the policy into Russian, he posted it in the locker room. Within hours after the notice went up, the front desk was besieged by, well, steamed-up bathers. Something got lost in translation.

Fortunately, a Russian-speaking staff member saved the day, and Fucci can laugh about the mix-up today. It was just one of the challenges running a YMCA that really ought to be spelled with the letters U and N.

I only wish they had included more details about the translation gaffe.  And imagine that the ED learned his lesson and in the future will ask his multilingual staff to check any translations!

To read the entire article, click here.

While interagency cooperation and support is standard and even welcomed in law enforcement, what happens when a fed is called in to assist a state cop and then finds that a federal immigration law has been violated?  Well, the Border Patrol gets to arrest them, even if they were detained for a routine traffic stop in Washington!  Since there are currently no Spanish speaking cops in Jefferson County, the police department will call in federal immigration agents if they need assistance with Spanish translation.

 Hernandez said that after the deputy completed the traffic stop, the Border Patrol agent interviewed the driver, determined there was a federal immigration violation and detained the person.

Said Brasfield: “Sgt. [Andy] Pernsteiner made a routine traffic stop as noted in the incident. We do not have any trained law enforcement personnel that speak Spanish.

“Knowing that there was a multilingual Border Patrol officer on duty, they were contacted for assistance and provided translation services.”

While spokespeople from the police department are careful to say that they are not doing the job of federal immigration agents, I wonder why the Border Patrol agent found it necessary to continue the interview with the person after the traffic stop had been completed.

Furthermore, will the use of federal immigration agents for interpretation purposes make people not call the police to report crimes for fear that their immigration status will be questioned?

To read the full article with more details about how agencies are negotiating their relationships in Washington, click here.

An interesting statistic from the National Health Law Program’s survey of 260 members of the National Association of Community Health Centers:

“Eighty-one percent of general internists treat LEP patients frequently — 54% at least once a day or a few times a week,” Hitov said.

The article in which this statistic was quoted also provides insight into the multiple issues that arise when attempting to provide quality medical services to a population that speaks a wide range of languages.  The following excerpt highlights the issues, how some health care facilities are responding to these issues, and a plan for moving forward:

Referrals to specialists who do not offer interpreters was cited as a major problem by Stevens. Another is family members who wish to serve as interpreters but also interfere with the clinical process and insert their own views.

The Fairfax center found similar solutions to those used in in the district. All health care professionals are bilingual, and there are language service lines in all exam and interview rooms, Stevens said.

To guide the way toward a world in which there are more health centers like the two featured in the briefing, the AMA and other organizations developed in 2001 a set of principles for providing health care access to people with limited English proficiency.

They include offering language assistance at no cost at all points of contact and in a timely manner; providing both verbal and written notice of the right to receive language services in a patient’s preferred language; and assurances that the language assistance is competent.

More hospitals are offering Spanish classes alongside traditional classes teaching clinical skills in major New York hospitals for their resident physicians.  The move toward providing doctors with training in Spanish is both practical (it can be difficult to find interpreters during certain shifts and patients prefer to speak directly with a doctor that speaks their native language) and cultural. 

One of the Spanish instructors at Yeshiva University’s medical school stressed the importance of cultural sensitivity in patient care as well as the need to beware of using slang terms with patients:

Still, according to Ms. Marzan, of Einstein, stressing cultural sensitivity is also key. For example, some immigrants take herbal supplements to treat their ailments. Patients might also describe symptoms in a way that doctors are not accustomed to. For example, describing pain as being felt everywhere might mean the patient feels a lot of pain, and pain that is described as moving from the stomach to the chest to the face may be a reference to nausea.

Slang should also be taken into account. During the language lesson at NewYork-Presbyterian, students were taking turns naming parts of the human form when one doctor mistakenly used a casual word for buttocks. Laughing, Mr. Shane corrected him. “‘Culo’ is basically ‘ass,’” he said. “You would never say that to a patient.”

To read the full article, click here.

An Arkansas man who was tried for a DUI signed a court waiver translated into Spanish with a very different meaning.  Last February, his lawyer challenged the court’s decision because what he signed wasn’t what the court intended he sign.  How did this happen?  Because of a bad translation, one that was never caught, even though the waiver had been in use for years:

“We all just assumed the waiver was correct,” Rogers lawyer Doug Norwood said. “I did, the judge did, everyone did. Now, come to find out we’ve been stumbling around in the dark for years, and the thing is hideously wrong.” Norwood said the waiver was translated years ago by a court clerk who wasn’t certified by the state, although she spoke Spanish.

The issue is with the word assume.  Many monolingual language speakers simply assume that a document is correctly translated, when in fact, if a certified, qualified translator isn’t used, the exact opposite can be the case.

A certified court interpreter was quoted in the article:

“You would never say ‘crimen’ for a misdemeanor,” Simmons said. “Now, you’re raising a misdemeanor to a felony.” The word “annual,” can be mistranslated to “anus” if an accent mark isn’t placed over the letter “n,” she said. “If all you do is pick up a dictionary or go online to translate, the meaning can be lost,” she said. “A literal translation can mean nothing like what it should.”

To read the complete article, which includes the court’s take on the situation, click here.

In Mesa, Arizona the police department has turned to volunteers to assist monolingual 911 dispatchers when Spanish-speakers call in.  The reasoning for suspending use of the Language Line (a for-profit interpretation service) is the budget crisis that so many municipalities are facing:

In 2006, Mesa spent $118,000 to translate calls that weren’t in English. And in the first four months this year, the city has spent $28,000. Most of the calls were in Spanish.

With only five certified Spanish-speaking operators out of 120, the communications center often relies heavily on a program called Language Line.

The program allows dispatchers to connect with translators for most of the world’s languages. However, as the need for translation services rises and the city faces tighter budgets, new ideas — like using volunteers — are becoming necessary.

“During lean times, it’s the creative ideas that are working,” said Cari Zanella, public safety communications administrator. “For us, it’s a perfect fit. Volunteers want to help and our 911 center can use the help.”

Police Chief George Gascón came up with the idea for the volunteer program after department analysts figured out how much translation services were costing the city.

I’m a bit torn over this move.  There’s an obvious need for translation services for 911 calls, and I do understand that something’s got to give when there are budget cuts.  But I can’t help but wonder why, in a major metropolitan area in a state with huge numbers of Spanish-speakers, only five out of 120 dispatchers speak Spanish?  I don’t think that moving towards use of volunteers is necessary, as the article states, but I do think that recruiting more bilingual paid employees is necessary.

To read the entire article, including quotes from one of the volunteers, click here.