Healthcare Workers Regularly Face Language Barriers: Accidents happen everyday to people across the United States resulting in emergency situations. Heart attacks, car accidents and even natural disasters can all result in a visit to the emergency room. First responders, EMT’s, nurses aids, nurses and doctors all work tirelessly to provide optimal healthcare to people in…
Current News Regarding Advancements in Machine Translation Technology: Machine translation software has truly advanced and developed at a rapid pace over the last few years. Enough so that Google claimed it’s neural machine translation (NMT) system produces translations that are “nearly indistinguishable” to that of human translations. The Google Neural Translation Team stated, “The quality…
The Vital Importance of Interpretation Services in The United States: In a review regarding the impact of medical interpretation services on the quality of healthcare, Glenn Flores wrote, “Five database searches yielded 2,640 citations and a final database of 36 articles, after applying exclusion criteria. Multiple studies document that quality of care is compromised when…
What is Localization? In this era of globalization, operating on an international level is becoming the norm due to the vast opportunities and benefits it provides. Many businesses are looking to localization in order to gain exposure through carefully adapting marketing material. Localization refers to the adaptation of a product, content, packaging, website or marketing…
Deaf Population in the United States According to Gallaudet University: Across all age groups, in the United States, approximately 1,000,000 people (0.38% of the population, or 3.8 per 1,000) over 5 years of age are “functionally deaf;” more than half are over 65 years of age. We emphasize that these estimates are based upon self-reported…
Recognizing the Need for Language Services: During a recent visit to the emergency room I spoke with a nurse regarding the frequency in which she enlists the aid of an interpreter in order to provide care to limited English proficient (LEP) patients. She told me she calls for an interpreter at least a few times…
Legal Interpretation is a Necessity in Our Diverse Communities: According to the Census Bureau there are over 350 languages and dialects spoken in the United States. The rapid influx of linguistic diversity is oftentimes causing confusion in our court systems. Clear communication is needed for lawyers to do their jobs and judges and juries to…