Death Threats, Interfering Daughters, & Other Worst Case Scenarios

I found out today that my presentation proposal to the Southeast Regional Medical Interpreter Conference was accepted. Entitled "Death Threats, Interfering Daughters, & Other Worst Case Scenarios," the presentation goes over some of the absolute worst things that can happen to you while interpreting, then highlights the portions of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care Code of Ethics designed to help interpreters deal with these and other situations.

Of course, to do this, I'm going to need loads of worst case scenarios. And while I've heard some doozies already, I'm willing to bet some of you reading this have had some really interesting things happen to you. So, feel free to email your worst-case scenarios to me (terenabell [at] ineverylanguage [dot] com) or post them here as comments and I'll do my best to include them. I'll leave whether you want credit on those up to you!

The Conference itself will be in Lexington at the University of Kentucky June 18-19. It's co-sponsored by the South Eastern Medical Interpreter's Association (SEMIA), the Medical Interpreter Network of Georgia (MING), the Tennessee Association of Professional Interpreters and Translators (TAPIT), and the Tennessee Association of Medical Interpreters (TAMIT). If you'd like to attend, registration information is available by clicking here.

Multilingual Article Out

It's been a good month here at In Every Language, with the ATA Chronicle having recently published my and Madalena's article (please see post below) and with Multilingual running an article of mine this month. The virtual edition hit the e-stands today and the print issue should be in the mail for any of you who subscribe.

Called "LinkingIn and Face[book]ing Off," the article discusses the (non-)professional nature of social media, sharing the do's and don't's of using LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media tools for business purposes. After the print issue has had a little room to breathe, I'll run the quick pointers here on the blog.

ATA Chronicle Publication

Taking a bit of time to brag here, I and Madalena Sanchez, In Every Language's interpreting coordinator, recently teamed up to write an article on how freelance translators and interpreters can grow their client base, increase their rates, and make language service providers love them. This article was called, cleverly enough, "Grow Your Client Base, Increase Your Rates, and Make LSPs Love You: A How-to."

The article recently ran in the ATA Chronicle, which is the trade magazine for the American Translators Association. You can read it in its entirety here.

While this might not necessarily be as a good of a read for our clients, I hope our translators and interpreters will benefit a great deal from it, as well as anyone new to the profession who's stumbled across this blog. It discusses some simple business practices in our profession that might help those individuals to get more work.

Feel free to let me (terenabell at ineverylanguage dot com) and Madalena (madalena at ineverylanguage dot com) know what you think.

Obama Administration Cracks Down on Language Assistance Availability

It's been a while since I've updated the blog--too long of a while, in fact--and the news below was important enough to get me back into the swing of it. Abstracted from an article written by Nataly Kelly for Common Sense Advisory, please find information below on how the Obama administration and the US Department of Labor are cracking down on Title VI violations (full story here):

In January, the Common Sense Advisory predicted that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) would begin taking a stronger stance on language issues under the Obama administration ("Title VI Enforcement to Grow under Obama," Jan09). Two months later, this assertion is already proving to be true. As federal agencies prepare to hand out funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the DOJ issued an important reminder about the role of language.

The Department of Justice highlighted the fact that all recipients of federal dollars - and that includes private companies - must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which expressly prohibits national origin discrimination, "including language access for limited English proficient persons." In other words, before beneficiaries dole out AIG-sized bonuses, they would be wise to make sure that their budgets account for translation needs.

Like father, like son. State and local government agencies often take their cues from the federal government - and, because they too are often the recipients of federal dollars, Title VI is applicable to these folks too. In fact, the federal attention to language issues coincides with other state and industry-specific language access issues that have taken place since the new president entered the White House.

Even with cutbacks in many commercial accounts, beneficiaries of recovery monies - both public and private - will not be able to slash language services from their budgets without costly consequences. In fact, the DOJ is making the most of the opportunity to ensure that the funds are spent in compliance with federal law.