Should We Translate or Shouldn’t We?

If Blackwater asked you to translate assembly instructions for an automatic rifle, would you do it? What if they told you the document’s target audience was teenagers in the Sudan?  This is not a hypothetical, but a real dilemma my staff had to grabble with a few years ago.  At the height of Blackwater’s unpopularity, not that long after the shooting crisis in Iraq, my staff sat in an office in Louisville, Kentucky and asked ourselves, “Should we or shouldn’t we?”  In Every Language was still a young company, starting to grow an early, national-level client list, and to be quite frank, we probably could have used the money.  But we decided not to touch the project with the proverbial ten-foot pole.

Personally, I don’t know as much about the Sudan as I should, but I do know I don’t want to be responsible for anybody killing anybody there or anywhere else, for that matter.  For all I know, though, these guns could have been used for defensive purposes.  For all I know, without this translation, someone might not have known how to properly assemble his gun and gotten his defenseless head blown off as a result.  The point is, once we’ve translated, the power leaves our hands and the document returns to the hands of the client.  We rarely know exactly what happens to it.  I didn’t know then and I don’t know today.  So given the chance, would I turn down translating that project again? That’s something else I don’t know.

Military contracts and contractors aside, the language services profession is rote with controversial issues as subject matter.  If you’re pro-life, do you interpret for an abortion?  If you’re pro-choice, do you interpret for a crisis pregnancy center?  And it doesn’t stop there.  Legal interpreters who are against the death penalty having to interpret judgments they don’t agree with, feminist translators asked to localize for adult entertainment.  Read enough bumper stickers and you’ll quickly learn everyone has their issues.

In truth, though, these issues are important to us on many levels.  Regardless of your set of ethics, no one likes to think of herself as an unethical person.  We each have our constructs, whether we have religion or not, the sheer having or not-having of religion being yet another.  Be we ruled religiously, morally, or ethically, we all have certain things we will or will not do: murder, theft, translation for two competing clients?

Located in Arlington, Virginia, Alboum and Associates bills itself as “translators for the good guys.”  There, the meaning of good guys includes clients in the stop-smoking market, or as CEO Sandra Alboum calls it, “tobacco control.”  Because of the large number of clients Alboum has in this industry, her contract translators pledge not to translate for big tobacco while they’re translating for her.  Alboum claims, “We are translating for you but we are also supporting your cause and as part of your cause, we commit to not work for big tobacco or any pro-tobacco organization or pro-tobacco lobbying. We’re not going to work for competition, if you will.”  In fact, Alboum goes one step further by promoting her company and her contractors to clients as being tobacco-free.

Now, I’m from Kentucky, where tobacco wasn’t just the number one cash crop, but where farming it was a way of life.  But in today’s climate, you don’t have to tell me or our dwindling state economy that smoking is no longer cool.  Anti-tobacco sentiment is, in fact, the well-shared, majority opinion.  But many issues don’t boil down into majority and minority categories with such ease.  Take abortion for example.  According to Derek Selznick with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, 20% of Americans are adamantly pro-life, 20% are adamantly pro-choice and the rest are either in between or without opinion.  No majority or minority here, unless you claim the majority as undecided.  Tobacco use may be a clearer cut issue, but when your opinion is without clear majority, whose ethics does a company follow then?

In Alboum’s case, her company would drop a translator who translated for both sides. If her company had pro-choice clients, “then [a translator started] translating for the conservative, right-to-lifers…we would have to re-evaluate.  You’re supposed to be on the same page as your client and you’re providing a service for people that understand and are sensitive toward their cause.”

Victor Hertz, CEO of Accredited Language Services in New York, New York, disagrees.  He claims he would never drop a freelance translator based on who else hse translated for or on any set of ethics that translator might hold.  “Unless you can prove that there’s a social good that’s being infringed upon, it’s none of your business,” he says, asking “At what point do you impose your personal values upon others?”

And that is the question.  Whose is it to judge?  As company owners, I suppose you could say it’s ours.  In the end, I, Terena Bell, am responsible for In Every Language as a business.  Sandra Alboum is responsible for Alboum and Associates; Victor Hertz is responsible for Accredited Language Services.  As CEO’s, the buck stops with us and whether and how our companies judge will be based off the executive judgments we make.  In fact, this responsibility is exactly why LinguaLinx in Cohoes, New York, owned by CEO David Smith, doesn’t judge as a business.  “We don’t judge,” Smith says matter-of-factly.  “I would limit the company if I injected my personal viewpoints or morals or values into it.”  Not limiting his company is a personal driver for Smith, whose company regularly takes on projects and clients he doesn’t agree with.  “My company does a lot of things I don’t agree with but in the interest of growing the company as its own independent entity, that I just need to [do].”

One of these things may or may not be pornography translation.  At this year’s annual conference of the American Translators Association –Translation Company Division, Smith sat a panel where he admitted to accepting adult entertainment projects after another panelist expressed opinions against it.  To Smith, though, the ethic at hand is not whether pornography itself is good or bad.  The more important ethic -- the larger priority -- is that responsibility I mentioned earlier.  “Because of my decisions and what I’ve done,” Smith states, “forty-three people go home to their families and can pay their bills.  That’s a good feeling.  I’m creating jobs. That’s the way I look at it.  I’m creating jobs, I’m creating profitability, I’m creating opportunity. People have 401K’s, their retirements, and they rely on me, they rely on my decisions. So whether I personally agree with porn or not, the decision is made that it’s profitable and it needs to be done.”  To Smith, each assignment LinguaLinx accepts gets him one step closer to a goal and creates greater provision for his employees.

 For some of us, though, the two concepts of growing our businesses and pushing our own beliefs aside are not mutually exclusive.  At the end of the day, both translators and business owners are still people.  In fact, 46% of translators and interpreters recently polled by Foreign Exchange Translations occasionally turn assignments down for ethical reasons, and even Smith admits, “I don’t think [accepting assignments you’re against is] necessary to grow, but I think you’re limiting your growth.”

Assignment acceptation and rejection are more clearly addressed in the interpreting world, where one might argue that individual interpreters have an obligation to reject assignments that run contrary to their personal beliefs.  In fact, the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC) Code of Ethics includes provisions on both impartiality and neutrality:

Impartiality: The interpreter strives to maintain impartiality and refrains from counseling, advising or projecting personal biases or beliefs.

Neutrality: The interpreter maintains the boundaries of the professional role, refraining from personal involvement.

Both of these core ethics speak of separation between yourself and your assignment, but the way in which interpreters, well, interpret these rules can be very different.

Marjory Bancroft, Director of Cross-Cultural Communications in Columbia, Maryland, claims “interpreters divide roughly into three categories on this issue: 1) Interpreters who are certain they could remain neutral no matter what the assignment (or just about certain), 2) Interpreters who know there are certain assignments they could not be impartial about and who would therefore decline or withdraw from such assignments, [and] 3) Interpreters who are not sure what they would do and may have to face such a situation in real life to know.”

I think we would all admit that categories one or two would be preferred: interpreters who are certain in their abilities and limitations.  Actually, for Victor Hertz, ethical boundaries are just one more area that make a linguist qualified or unqualified for a particular assignment.  “If [freelancers are] good, they’ll say I can’t do this. If the reason they can’t do this is ethical -- whatever the issue is -- that seems to me to be no different than a translator saying I do technical but not legal.”

Personally, I wish all freelancers would bow out when they knew they wouldn’t do a good job. It would keep a lot of the world’s bad translations from being out there. Whether you think a certain client is evil or whether you simply don’t know the words involved with a particular topic, the fact of the matter remains that you should be professional enough to know what assignments you can do well and which ones you can’t–for whatever reason.  Translation is not the place for martyrs and regardless of which jobs we accept, it’s our job to do those jobs well.  Only we, as individuals, can tell what will and what won’t get in the way.  When Blackwater came to my company, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about the project.  But there was one thing I did know: my individual ethics would have gotten in the way.  So what gets in your way? When should you and when shouldn’t you translate?

(This article initially ran in MultiLingual Magazine.)

 

Resources:

Clark, Ken.  “That which must not be translated.”  Translation Guy Blog.  March 29, 2010. www.1-800-translate.com/TranslationBlog/index.php/2010/03/27/that-which-must-not-be-translated/

Foreign Exchange Translations Ethics Poll. www.quibblo.com/quiz/dv7pxJR/Do-you-refuse-translations-on-ethical-moral-political-or-religious-grounds-By-Medical-Translation-Insight

National Council on Interpreting in Health Care. Code of Ethics. data.memberclicks.com/site/ncihc/NCIHC%20National%20Code%20of%20Ethics.pdf

Are Teachers Like Translators? (Underappreciated?)

First day of school today in Christian County, Ky, where my mother, as I write, is working with 27 kindergartners experiencing formal education for the first time. Teachers, as a whole, are under-appreciated; I’d argue they’re even more under-appreciated than translators and interpreters by some people. But there is an awareness that you have to have a degree to teach and, in the public system, at least, you have to be certified. There are still misconceptions, though, especially among those who claim teachers get summers off. If there are K-12 teachers out there who truly get their summers off, I would like to ask them who straightens their room after a year’s worth of havoc, purchases materials for the next year to come, and prepares lessons as well as the room for fall. These people obviously don’t teach kindergarten and they sure aren’t my mother, who goes into school for work almost every day all summer long. She is constantly looking for new and different ways of doing, feeling the weight of those 27 impressionable young minds upon her conscious when she lies down at night. Teaching is her calling as language is mine.

My mother has very little to do with translation, except the fact that she raised me and I now run a translation company. But, in some ways, teaching and translation share a great deal. Whether her job is understood by non-teaching America or not, she still does it. She knows that when she teaches her students to read, to recognize shapes and colors, and to play nicely with others, that she’s opening up a new world to them with the earliest building blocks required. Some of her students and families are easier to work with and appreciate her role. Others are and do not. Some care about the education she gives their child; some are so disconnected from their children that they can’t even name where they go to school. She has had first-day students who could already read and write; she has had students arrive the first day who weren’t even potty-trained. “Not every child is the same,” she once told me. “So I don’t treat them the same. I learn what they need and give them that. This one needs help reading, I help him with reading. This one needs help with math, I help him with math.” But Mother is wrong in part; in a way, she does give all of her students the same thing. She gives them all opportunity.

Sometimes we as translators can feel misunderstood and underappreciated. We have some clients who come to us begrudgingly, bitter about their budgets and looking to translate only what will bring them under compliance with the law. They do not see translation as important just as some parents do not value education. But we have also clients who are easier to deal with than others, clients who know the value of the services we offer and how difficult our work is to perform. As translation providers, though, we give them all opportunity.

There’s been a lot of talk in industry circles lately about client education and who will work with the uneducated. Through recent and upcoming NCIHC and ATA efforts, client outreach is prepared to peak. I personally have an article coming out on this topic in the October/November issue of Multilingual. You’ll have to wait until then to learn most of my opinions, but the crux of the matter is, people out there need us, whether they know how to ask for our help or not.

It’s easy for a translation provider to only take on new clients who are seasoned translation buyers. It’s actually in a provider’s economic self-interest, as rates can be higher with this group and less project management time is often required. But with the booming need for language services in our country today, there are lots of clients out there who simply need the opportunity to learn who translators are and what we do.

My mother doesn’t personally pick her students. She never knows until she walks in her room the first day what she’s going to get. But she loves them and she educates them just the same, regardless of what they know before they get there. She loves them. And today, on her first day back, for her 19th year of teaching, I just had to take the opportunity to say I appreciate it.

Part Six: How Do I Monitor an Agency’s Performance?

(Back to Part 5.)

There are a number of ways to monitor an agency’s performance. One is to track requests filled, requests returned, no-show and late arrival rates, billing error rates, complaints from providers, responsiveness, resolution of problems, and reoccurrence of problems. This data can usually be tracked electronically on a routine basis with a minimum of effort.

Another way is to actively solicit feedback from your front-desk and provider staff about the agency, either through routine feedback or periodic surveys. How easy is it to order an interpreter? How often do the interpreters arrive late? Are the interpreters polite? Do they engage in appropriate protocols? Do staff members have any reason to comment on the quality of the interpretation? While actively requesting feedback from the people who are using the agency on a daily basis is more cumbersome than electronic tracking, it is the best way of monitoring how the agency is doing.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

Part Five: How Do I Use an Agency?

(Back to Part 4.)

A few words on working with agencies: each agency will be a bit different in how it does business. How organized you are internally, however, will have a large affect on how smoothly the collaboration goes.

First of all, make sure your internal systems are in place. It should be clear to employees when the need for an interpreter should be noted, who is responsible for ordering the interpreter and how that is to be done. In addition, staff should know who has the responsibility to cancel the interpreter if the patient cancels, whose responsibility it is to sign the interpreter in and out if you require signed encounter forms, and whose responsibility it is to dismiss the interpreter if the patient does not show up. While doing all this by phone may be easier, doing all transactions by fax will leave a paper trail that may be important in case of disputes.

When you order the interpreter, you should be able to provide the patient’s name and some sort of identification number, the provider’s name and the date, time and location of the appointment. Also, be sure you know about how long you’ll need the interpreter; it is very expensive to overbook an interpreter’s time since you are paying by the hour, however it is also nonproductive to underbook an interpreter who then may need to leave for another appointment before the first one is completed. Additional information that is helpful for the interpreter to know is the patient’s gender and age, as this gives the interpreter important clues as to how the patient should be addressed. Finally, any information you can give the agency as to the nature of the appointment will allow the interpreter to come better prepared.

The most important part in working with an agency is clear communication. If you have a concern or complaint, a quality agency will want to know about it. The agency becomes part of your language access team, so the better the teamwork, the more effective your interpreter service.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

(Go to Part 6.)

Part Four: How Do I Choose the Best Language Agency to Serve my Institution?

(Back to Part 3.)

When you contact a prospective language agency, you will want to inquire about a wide range of issues in order to gauge the likely quality of the services.

Quality of interpreting
• How does the agency recruit interpreters/translators?
The most successful agencies recruit interpreters on an ongoing basis from a wide
range of sources. They will maintain close on-going relationships with the
immigrant and refugee communities from which interpreters may come, as well as
with professional interpreter organizations and training programs. Agencies which
are vague about how they recruit may have difficulty filling your needs long term.

• How does the agency screen interpreter candidates?
Different agencies will have different minimum requirements for interpreters.
While there is some debate whether it is necessary (or even possible) to require that all interpreters have a college degree, all interpreters should certainly be screened for their language skills in both active languages. Screening techniques range from an informal conversation to standardized testing, so ask specifically about how screening is done. As is often the case, standards for common language interpreters (like Spanish) are likely to be higher than standards for interpreters of “hard-to-find” languages.

• Does the agency require interpreters to have received professional training in
interpreting?
As few health and human service interpreters come with degrees in interpretation,
it is very important that interpreters receive some form of professional training as
interpreters. Does the agency require training? If so, how many hours? Trainings
can run from four hours to over 200. Obviously, the longer the training, the better,
but 40 hours is a common length for basic training programs. What does the
training cover? Ask to see the curriculum. The course should, at a minimum, cover
the interpreter role, ethics, modes, basic conversion skills, handling the flow of the session, intervening and medical terminology. The more participatory the course,
the more skill building and practice included, the more effective the course will be. Ask also about the credentials of the trainer. The impact of a course often depends on who is teaching.

• Does the agency require any continuing education of its contractors? If so, how much and what sort of proof do the contract interpreters have to offer?
Continuing education is important and reasonable to expect of interpreters who
provide services regularly. The California Healthcare Interpreter Association (CHIA)
has chapters in the Bay Area, the Los Angeles area, the Central Valley and the
Sacramento area that may provide continuing education for health care interpreters.

• What percentage of the agency’s interpreters is certified?
It is useful to know how many certified interpreters the agency has in each language; however, true certification programs are rare. At the time of this writing, there is no publicly available certification process for health care interpreters in California. However, there are several other forms of interpreter certification of which you should be aware.

The Federal Court system certifies interpreters in Spanish, Haitian Creole and Navajo. The California Personnel Board also certifies court interpreters in Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Tagalog and Vietnamese. There is a “Medical Interpreter” certification for legal interpreters providing services for Workers Compensation exams, but this test is not designed to certify clinical interpreters and is offered only in Spanish.

Language Line Services (LLS), a for-profit telephonic interpreting agency, has developed a valid internal certification process, which at this time is available only to LLS interpreters.

American Sign Language interpreters may be certified by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) or the Registry for Interpreters of the Deaf (RID), with a variety of special certificates for particular venues. The two organizations have also formed a joint task force, the National Council on Interpreting which is developing a new, joint certification process.

The American Translators Association (ATA) accredits translators into English from Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish; and from English into Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

The Department of Social and Health Services of the State of Washington also has a certification program for health care interpreters who speak Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese. The state also offers a “qualification” test to interpreters of other languages. Especially with telephonic providers, you may find interpreters in their pools who are certified through this process.

If an agency tells you that all its interpreters are certified, ask who has certified them. If the certification is internal to the agency, ask to see the reliability and validity data to make sure that it is truly a certification test and not simply an assessment. Obviously, you would like to see more certified interpreters than not in an agency’s interpreter pool. However, if it appears that few of the agency’s interpreters are certified, take a careful look before assuming that interpreter quality will be poor. It may be that the agency provides services largely in uncertifiable languages, or that training is being used in lieu of certification to guarantee quality.

• What Code of Ethics are the interpreters/translators asked to follow?
At present, there is no one code of ethics for health care interpreters that is
nationally accepted, although California Healthcare Interpreters Association
(CHIA) has recently published a draft code of ethics8 and the National Council on
Interpreting in Health Care is currently working to build national consensus
around a single code of ethics. As a result, at this time each agency may have its
own code. Ask to see it, and ask how interpreters/translators are instructed about
it. If the code is simply mailed to interpreters, it will be doubtful that they will
really understand it.

• What protocols are interpreters expected to use?
Are the interpreters expected to use first person interpreting, that is to say “I have a stomach ache” instead of “The patient says she has a stomach ache”? Are they
expected to do a pre-session with the patient and provider to clarify their role and
how they will interpret? Do they provide culture-related information if
communication has broken down due to cultural reasons? Will they advocate if
necessary? How are in-person interpreters told to dress and present themselves?
How are the interpreters instructed to handle difficult situations? Many agencies
will have an orientation apart from formal training to teach interpreters the
accepted protocols of that particular agency. Ask to see any instructional materials
that are given out and make sure the protocols are in keeping with professional
practice and your internal guidelines.

• How does the agency provide long-term quality assurance for interpretation?
After the interpreters start to provide services, is there any mechanism in place to see how they are doing? Are interpreters periodically monitored in any way? Or will the agency rely on complaints from you as a quality assurance technique?

• What mechanisms does the agency have to instruct interpreters about specific policies and procedures of your institution?
How does the agency communicate with its interpreters? Is there a newsletter,
monthly meetings, a Listserv? As you work together, it will certainly be necessary
for the agency to communicate details to interpreters about working at your
institution, whether there has been a change in parking designations or there are
new instructions on getting encounter forms signed. Make sure the agency has
some structured way of contacting its interpreter pool.

• Does the agency specialize in any particular industry(ies)?
Some agencies serve all venues: legal, medical, insurance, social service, financial, customer service, educational, etc. Others will specialize in only one or two industries. While a more focused agency will not necessarily give better service, it is easier for interpreters to interpret effectively in fewer venues, simply because this requires a smaller range of specialized vocabulary and protocols. Some large agencies may have different cadres of interpreters to serve different venues, or may provide assistance with vocabulary development to interpreters who serve multiple venues. If the agency serves a wide range of venues, you might want to ask specifically how the agency guarantees quality across so many different situations.

Interpreter service

• Available languages
You will want to ask the agency about the depth and breadth of its interpreter pool.
How many interpreters does it have actively available on a daily basis? How many
in each language? How many are really qualified? Some agencies seem to have an
awfully long list of “available languages,” making one wonder if those interpreters
would really be available if and when you needed them.

To evaluate what you learn about the agency’s capacity, you will need to know your organization’s language needs, both by language and by demand. What are your top five languages? Which language requests have you found especially difficult to fill? Some agencies specialize in certain language groups: Spanish only, Asian languages only, “hard to find” languages only, ASL only. Instead of expecting one agency to cover all your language needs, it may be better to have multiple contracts with various agencies, and use each for the service in which it specializes.

• Back-up alliances
Some agencies have agreements with other agencies to back each other up if one
agency cannot cover a request. While this practice will certainly expand the
agency’s capacity, you will want to make sure that the allied agencies maintain the
same standards that you would expect from the contracted agency.

• Responsiveness
What percentage of all requests is the agency able to fill? This data the agency
should be tracking and should be willing to share. Remember that no agency can
fill 100 percent of requests.

• No-show rates
How often do this agency’s in-person interpreters fail to show at appointments? As
with response rates, the agency should track this and be willing to share the data.

• Connect times (for telephonic interpreter services)
What is the average connect time? Connect times of 45 seconds or less are
competitive; more than that is questionable. Also, ask how connect times are
calculated. They should be counted from when the call starts to ring at the agency
until an interpreter is on the line. You also might want to ask about connect times
on your most common languages. Since it may well take longer to get an interpreter
in a rare language than in a common one, chances are that connect times for
Spanish will be less than the average.

• Special equipment requirements (for telephonic interpreter services)
Many telephonic interpreter services will be able to recommend specific speaker
phone technologies. A few require particular equipment in order to provide their
service. Since additional technology will certainly add to cost while potentially
improving quality, it is important to hear what technology upgrades you may need
to work with each agency.

• Disaster recovery system (for telephonic interpreter services)
If there were to be some sort of national disaster, access to telephonic interpreters would become more important than ever. Or, if there were a local disaster near your agency’s call center, communications might be interrupted. Since your agency depends entirely on phone lines and computerized switching systems, what plan is in place if the lines go down? Some telephonic interpreting agencies now have completely redundant communication systems, allowing them to easily switch
systems if one technology fails. It is especially important to ask about disaster
recovery systems if you are contemplating using a telephonic service as the sole
provider of your interpreter services.

• Switching equipment (for telephonic interpreter services)
For those with experience with call centers and telecommunications, information
on the agency’s switching system can tell you a great deal about how prepared it
will be to handle a large volume of calls, track connectivity statistics and provide
accurate billing and reporting.

• What additional services are offered?
As mentioned above, some agencies offer ancillary support services that may be of
use to you. The more services they offer, the more of a partner they can become.

Administrative
• Fees
Of course you will want to ask about fees. In-person interpreter services are usually charged by the hour, with a one-hour minimum, although this may vary based on location. Telephonic interpreter services are usually charged by the minute. Fees
may vary based on language or by the time of day of the service. In addition, there
may also be a one-time set-up fee, a monthly minimum, volume discounts and
cancellation fees. Make sure you know all the fees before you sign up.

• Cancellation policies
What is the agency’s cancellation policy? If you cancel a request for an interpreter, will you be charged? Most agencies will not charge if the cancellation is more than 24 hours before the appointment. Some agencies will charge, as they feel it only fair to pay the interpreter whose time has been reserved and who may not be able to get another appointment to replace the cancelled one. Same-day cancellations are almost always charged.

• Company history
Learn as much as you can about the people at the agency. Who started it? What
was the founder doing beforehand? Does the founder have previous experience in
the language field? How long has the agency been in business? How quickly has it
grown? Who are the key players at the agency and what are their backgrounds?
These questions can give you a feel for the people behind the logo: the people with
whom you will be dealing, and the people whom you will need to trust in order to
build a working business relationship.

• Industry involvement
Is the agency at all involved in helping to build the health care interpreting field? Is the agency a member of CHIA, of the American Translators Association (ATA), of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC)? Does the
agency provide scholarships for interpreters to get training, or support local
training efforts? Agencies that are supportive of the field are demonstrating
commitment to quality interpreting that may be reflected in their services.

• Key documents
Ask to see a standard contract and an example of a billing statement. If you are
going to need specific data on your bill that is not routinely provided, bring that up in negotiations to assure that the agency has the capacity to track that data.

Finally, after you have asked all your questions and reviewed all the materials provided to you, ask for references. While it is not appropriate to request a complete client list, agencies should be able to put you in contact with a few current clients. When you talk to the references, ask for specific information as opposed to general impressions.

If you are contracting for telephonic interpreter services, your last step is to request a test call. This means that the agency allows you to put through one interpreter request free of charge in order to test how the service works. You may want to try an uncommon language to see if the agency can really come through, or you may want to request your most commonly needed language, to see how the agency will respond in the situation for which you will most use it.
Either way, a test call can be most revealing and will give you a good feel as to how the agency will really function.

Choosing an agency (or agencies) may seem rather complicated, however a quality agency will be your best partner in meeting your language needs. Having to recontract with new agencies because the old ones didn’t work out is a major investment of effort. It’s worth the time up front to choose an agency that can serve your needs well so that you can both get about the business of providing language access.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

(Go to Part 5.)

Part Three: How Can a Language Agency Help Me?

(Back to Part 2.) 

How can a language agency best serve your organization? The answer will depend on the level of demand, your internal resources, the language mix of your patient population, and the capacity of the agencies at your disposal. Most health care and social service institutions use a combination of resources to meet language access needs. Language agencies can be integrated into your language access service in a variety of ways, depending on the needs of your institution.

Auxiliary support for overextended staff and/or contract interpreters
Institutions with in-house staff interpreters, contract interpreters, and trained bilingual staff who interpret, will often call an agency as an auxiliary resource when other (usually less costly) resources are not available. Even if you have three full-time Spanish interpreters on staff, you will need some additional help when seven Spanish-speaking patients all book appointments for 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Or you may have interpreters available only between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. and need some help covering the occasional emergency at night. The right agency can fill this need on an ad-hoc basis without your incurring the cost of hiring more staff.

Primary source of interpreters of languages of low demand
Some organizations use agencies primarily to provide interpreters for those languages that they only need occasionally. Even with a full complement of staff interpreters, contracted interpreters and bilingual providers, you may not have anyone who speaks Ibo, Chamorro or Kurdish. Languages such as Khmer, Korean, or Cantonese may be more commonly spoken among your patient population, but you still may not have a large enough demand to warrant contracting or hiring a staff person. Agencies are more likely to have interpreters of languages of limited diffusion.
Also, because agencies generally serve many institutions, they may be able to keep such interpreters busy enough that they seek training and gain sufficient experience to become skilled interpreters.

Substitute for an internal interpreter service
Some institutions find it simpler to outsource all of their language assistance needs; they use the agency as a substitute for an internal interpreter department. In these cases, anyone in the institution who needs an interpreter simply calls the agency directly. This obviates the need for an interpreter service department or complicated decision trees of whom staff should call with language needs.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

(Go to Part 4.)

Part 2: What Can I Expect From a Language Agency?

(Back to Part 1.)

Credibility

Just as in any business relationship, you should be able to trust an agency’s integrity. This is a fast-growing industry in some parts of the state and the nation, and there is little oversight. Because of fierce competition, high expectations by users and a lack of national standards in the field, it seems that some agencies stretch the truth a little – or a lot – in representing their services. When you approach an agency (or one approaches you) about providing services to you, don’t be afraid to ask questions and require verification of the answers. Agencies that are serious about providing a quality service will be willing to share this information.

Quality interpreting
The most important expectation you should have of a language agency is quality interpreting. After all, this is the product it is selling. Interpreters should be carefully screened and should have professional training. An agency should be willing to guarantee the quality of the language services being sold. When the agency cannot provide an interpreter whose skills it can stand behind, it should advise you before accepting the assignment and tell you the qualifications of the person it can provide. Especially with languages of limited diffusion, it may be that an untrained bilingual is the best you can hope for, but you should know that before the interpreter arrives.

High quality customer service
A language agency, like any business, should be able to provide good customer service to you, the client. Some aspects of good customer service include:
• Polite and efficient call center staff
When you call the agency, whoever answers the phone should be courteous,
efficient and knowledgeable.
• Ability to meet your demand for interpreters
The agency should be able to fill most of the appointments you assign, except in
languages that it told you at the time of contract that it could not provide. A
response rate over 85 percent is acceptable for some, but many agencies have
internal benchmarks of 95 percent or higher. Telephonic availability rates will
likely be higher than in-person rates, and the rates for “hard to find” languages will likely be lower. Remember that no agency will be able to fill your requests 100
percent of the time.
• Low cancellation rates
If an agency commits to sending an interpreter, you should be able to expect that
it will send one. Calling you back to say that an interpreter could not be provided
for an appointment that was already accepted should be a very rare occurrence.
• Low no-show or late arrival rates
When the agency commits to sending an interpreter, the interpreter should actually arrive — and arrive on time. Again, there will always be occasional no-shows
or late arrivals, but this should be the exception.
• Acceptable emergency response time
If you call an agency for a walk-in patient, the agency should be able to get you an
interpreter within an hour (depending on the location of the appointment and the interpreter and the language). Many agencies, even those that do not routinely offer telephonic interpreting, will offer an interpreter over the phone in emergency
situations that require an interpreter immediately.
• Implementation
If you request it, an agency should be willing to train your staff on how to use the
agency’s services, and perhaps even on how to use an interpreter if the agency is the sole provider of language services in the system.
• Rational scheduling of interpreters
It is reasonable to expect that the agency will not overbook its in-person
interpreters so that the interpreter must leave in the middle of an appointment. If
the appointment runs over because the clinic is running behind, or if more services
are required than were originally requested, the interpreter and the agency should
not be penalized if the interpreter has to leave. If this becomes a pattern, it would be wise to negotiate a solution with the agency.
• Rapid connect rates
For telephone interpreter services, the agency should be able to provide an average
connect rate of under a minute, measured from when the phone starts to ring at
the agency to when an interpreter is on the line. Some agencies’ average connect
rates are under 30 seconds.
• Effective complaint resolution
Preferably, there should be someone assigned to your account (an account
manager) or someone assigned to resolve problems who will respond to your
concerns promptly. It is reasonable to expect at least a return call within 24 hours, even if resolving the problem takes longer. Agreements should then be fulfilled and promised services delivered. In addition, the agency should have a method of tracking and documenting concerns so that patterns can be identified.

Good business practices
Language agencies should be treated like any other contracted service:
• Contract
There should be a clear contract in place that assigns liability and specifies
responsibilities, pay rates and the manner of resolving difficulties. A contract
should be signed regardless of how small a client you may be.
• Computerized billing
The agency should have a system for providing accurate, timely billing.
Computerized billing is a virtual necessity, with tracking based on signed
encounter forms if the service is done in-person.
• Data collection
The agency should have the capacity to collect and report on basic data such as
appointment date, language, encounter, name of the interpreter, and start and end times.
• Financial stability
The agency should be financially stable. Agencies which function with limited cash
flow will not be likely to provide you with consistently high-quality services.
Agencies can reasonably be expected to wait 30 days for payment, but if your
institution routinely takes 60 or 90 days to pay contractors, you should make sure
the agency is able to wait that long for payment and still remain solvent.
• Solicitations
The agency or its interpreters should not solicit your providers directly but should
deal with administration.

Extra services
Some agencies may be able to provide additional services such as customized billing, participation in pilot projects, special tracking, provider training, telephonic aid in identifying patient languages, language identification cards, patient reminder calls, account managers, special pricing programs, implementation support and consulting services around language access services.

What’s not reasonable?
As mentioned above, some expectations of agencies are not reasonable. NO agency can be expected to:
• Fill all your requests all the time.
• Guarantee a 0 percent no-show rate.
• Have access to interpreters in every language in the world.
• Provide highly trained interpreters in languages of very low demand.
• Guarantee in-person interpreters available in under an hour.
• Provide weekly billing.
• Allow you to require its interpreters to do written translations while on an
interpreting assignment.
• Provide patient transportation.
• Allow its interpreters to participate in medical interviewing or securing
information from patients without providers present.
• Publish a list of its interpreters.
• Give out telephone numbers of interpreters.
• Allow you to work interpreters over three hours without a break.
• Provide highly complex data analysis at no extra cost, beyond normal
billing/reporting.
• Implement different policies and procedures for each customer.
• Allow you to contract directly with an interpreter who has come to your
institution through the agency.
• Write off charges incurred because of errors on the part of the health institution
staff.

Most important in deciding what is reasonable and unreasonable to expect from an agency is to have clear understandings at the beginning of the partnership and to maintain regular open lines of communication so that difficulties can be addressed and resolved.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

(Go to Part 3.)

How to Chose the Right Interpreting Company: Introduction

It's been a while since the California Endowment released Cindy Roat's letter on how to pick the best interpreting company for you. But the information in it is still important today. In effort to try to get this information to our clients, I'm going to post the letter here, with Cindy's permission. Technically, the California Endowment requests that we publish this in its entirety. Unfortunately, Blogger has another idea as blog entries can only run a certain length. I'll be publishing the letter one section at a time, instead, but these entries will be back to back and I certainly encourage you to read them all.

Let me know what you think!

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It happens every day. A patient comes in for an appointment; the doctor speaks English, the patient speaks Spanish. The social worker meets with a client about a problem with food stamps; he speaks English and Spanish, the client speaks Hmong. The school nurse calls home about a child with a fever. She speaks English; mom speaks Farsi, Armenian, Somali, or one of a hundred different languages. How is the service provider to do his or her job well in the face of these language differences?

There is a growing awareness in California, and across the United States, of the importance of quality language services to support communication between service providers and Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients and clients. Federal Civil Rights guidelines and accreditation standards are becoming clearer about these requirements.1 A growing body of research is showing that the use of family, friends and untrained bilingual staff to interpret leads to poor communication, and other research is showing that unclear communication leads to poor outcomes and higher service costs. Serving a multilingual community is becoming the norm for most health and human service organizations, leaving administrators searching for the resources that will help them close this language gap most efficiently.

There is no one formula for providing language access services. Hospitals, clinics and social service agencies are hiring staff interpreters, training bilingual staff to interpret and recruiting bilingual providers. Many are turning to a unique resource and a growing industry that can play a vital role in assuring language access for LEP patients and clients: the language agency.

Language agencies are organizations that provide interpretation and/or translation services to another organization, usually in return for a fee. They are also called interpreting agencies or translation agencies. They may differ in a number of ways. Some only provide interpreter services; others provide a variety of services. Some provide in-person interpretation only, some telephonic interpretation only, others provide both. Many are small, privately owned, for-profit companies, often started by entrepreneurs who were (or still are) interpreters themselves. Some are divisions within nonprofit community service agencies set up to coordinate support for immigrants and refugees. Others, especially telephonic interpreter agencies, may be large national corporations. Some specialize in particular venues, such as the legal or health care arenas, while others serve a variety of industries. None of these profiles are intrinsically better than the others; the key is to have
a clear idea of what you want from the agency and to choose one that meets those requirements.

How best to use a language agency? What can you expect from such a service? And, how do you choose a good one? This publication is designed to assist health and human services administrators who are interested in contracting with a language agency and who are asking themselves these questions. It deals principally with agencies providing interpreter services, as opposed to translation services, and spoken language as opposed to sign language. Much of the information included here, however, will also apply to translation agencies and to agencies specializing in interpretation for the deaf and hard of hearing. The purpose of this publication is to help you consider how a language agency might fit into your language access program, to suggest what you might look for when you are choosing an agency, and to help you avoid unrealistic expectations of an agency. In addition, a compendium of a few language agencies from each region of California is included to give you a sampling of existing resources. Language agencies can be a valuable partner in serving your LEP clients and patients; hopefully this guide will help you to find a good one and to work with it efficiently.

Source: Roat, Cynthia E. “How to Choose and Use a Language Agency: A Guide for Health and Social Service Providers Who Wish to Contract With Language Agencies.” Los Angeles: The California Endowment, February 2003.

Go to Part 2.

ATA, TCD, & Conferences in General

Today my translation project manager and I spent a lot of time pouring over the schedule of seminars for the upcoming American Translators Association (ATA) conference in New York City. After attending the conference last year, I wasn't really overwhelmed with a great need to go again this year, but after attending the Translation Company Division (TCD) conference in Quebec this summer, I'm reconsidering. One of the reasons I had elected not to go to this year's ATA was that the sessions just aren't built for language service provider (LSP) owners. And that's okay. The ATA's purpose isn't really to help us, no matter how hard the TCD may try. The ATA is for the freelancer. I agree with Ted Wozniack, German translator and active ATA member, when he says that the ATA should drop corporate memberships all together--that the Association of Language Companies (ALC) should represent LSPs while the ATA represents freelancers, and that the ALC and the ATA should represent the profession as a whole. But I meander.

Simply put, while the ATA conference might be fun, it's not at all educational for LSP execs. This year's schedule, for example, is packed full of such money-making thrillers as "U.S. and European Union Translation Quality International Standards" and "The Translation Service Market in China as Seen from Local Language Services Providers." Utterly enthralling and very applicable to running a more profitable business, I know. (Please note the sarcasm in my tone.)

So then why am I even thinking about going? Because I've finally learned what a conference is all about. Call me a silly girl, but when I went to my first translating & interpreting conference in 2006, I went to learn. Did I learn there, and have I learned at others since? Yes. Lesson one? You don't go to conferences to learn. You go to network.

Networking is a historically ugly word, conjuring up images of chiropractors and realtors huddling around the cheese table at your local chamber of commerce event, pushing off glossy business cards with their photos printed on them, pronouncing your name wrong as they say, "Call me," and shove the rectangular piece of paper stock in your hand. But networking at a conference--when done right--is entirely different than at chamber mixers, 100% of which I now make a forcible effort to avoid. At a conference, you can spend one-on-one time with people who actually do what you do (rare in our profession) and openly discuss ideas to help you both grow and learn. If you do it right, as I finally learned how to do at this year's TCD, then a freeflow of ideas is created, leading to the innovation that will see translating & interpreting through the crowdsourcing panic and beyond the fear and doubt caused by the continuing improvement of machine translation. These conferences then become the place where you can individually assure yourself and collectively improve. If there are truly any new thought leaders being born in our profession, then conferences are the places where they are grown.

So, all that said, will I be at ATA? I think we both know, if I am, it sure won't be for the sessions.

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.