S04E08: Language Access in the United States

Intro

Hello and welcome to the Translation Company Talk, a weekly podcast show focusing on translation services and the language industry. The Translation Company Talk covers topics of interest for professionals engaged in the business of translation, localization, transcription, interpreting, and language technology. The Translation Company Talk is sponsored by Hybrid Lynx. Your host is Sultan Ghaznawi with today’s episode.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Translation Company Talk podcast. Today I have invited Carol Velandia to speak about language access for minority and underserved communities. It is the most fundamental challenge and the reason for the existence of the translation and interpreting services.

 

Carol Velandia is the founder and CEO of Equal Access Language Services LLC. She is an expert in the areas of language access policy and negotiation and conflict resolution. She provides advice to companies and organizations that are seeking to make meaningful cultural changes in their diversity and inclusion policies.

 

Carol has set out to disrupt the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion by incorporating language access as a key component. She helps her clients navigate federal and state-specific regulations and comply with key elements of service delivery to the limited English-proficient population. She assists in the design, planning, and execution of language access plans for companies of all sizes, enabling them to meet culturally and linguistically appropriate standards and abide by regulations designed to uphold civil rights protections and guarantees.

 

Carol serves as an adjunct faculty member for the graduate program in Interpretation and Translation at the University of Maryland, College Park, and for the master’s program in Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Carol is the creator of Language as an Equalizer program, a program aimed to professionalize the human sciences that provide services to the LAP community and of the award-winning video saving lives in many languages.

 

Carol, welcome to the Translation Company Talk Podcast.

 

Carol Velandia

Thank you, Sultan. I’m delighted to be here.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m so happy finally we get to talk. There’s a lot of people who know you, but there’s a few people who don’t know you. And for them listening to you for the first time, please introduce yourself to them and tell us what you do and what is keeping you busy these days.

 

Carol Velandia

Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon. My name is Carol Velandia, and I am a social worker, an interpreter, and an entrepreneur. What’s keeping me busy these days is I continue to develop materials for my training on effective inclusion through language access. I want to formalize this training, and that is connected to the topic about today, which is language access. I founded the company Equal Access Language Services about five years ago because I wanted to combine sort of all the different knowledges that I bring.

 

I studied psychology, then I studied business, and then I became an interpreter sort of by accident. And then I realized that there was this big problem with people that didn’t speak English and were not able to successfully access medical services. That’s how I started. And so, this sparked my interest, and I decided to study social work. And all the work I did in social work, all the papers I did in social work were related to language access, and that’s how I ended up creating my company, and that’s where I am today.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you for that introduction, Carol. You have an interesting story to share, and I’m interested to hear that about how you joined this industry. Obviously, you had some foundation from your studies, but what motivated you to join this industry? And please tell us how you decided to start your company and stay within this industry.

 

Carol Velandia

Well, it was through experience. I worked for many years at one of the largest hospitals in the US in the international department, and I work primarily, well, at first, I worked with international patients and was in marketing and nothing to do really with language barriers or language access. But because I needed to, well, the hospital wanted to sponsor my green card, and they needed to justify sort of like a work that was more in demand or more urgent or that only I could fulfill. And so, they transferred me to the language access department, completely different kind of work that I did before, and I ended up falling in love with it because I realized that the community surrounding this hospital was in need of language services. And I began to understand this need and how it impacted people that didn’t speak the language. It was actually through one of the patients that really, I realized how much of a need this was and the impact that language access had in people.

 

This patient, I’m obviously not going to say his actual name, but I’m going to name him Jose. He was from El Salvador, and he was fleeing violence in his country of origin. He was being persecuted by the gangs, and he decided to come to the United States to save his life. And he actually took a journey that maybe many people know about the La Bestia, which is a freight train that ends up killing people really because people jump on it out of desperation and do the journey in Central America to try to come to the United States.

 

Well, he took this train and arrived in the States just to be deported again. He obviously needed to save his life, comes back again, and he goes through the desert this time. And then when he arrives to the United States, he was able to stay, but after he suffered all of these different types of violence and then poverty and all these different challenges that he had just in the way to come to the United States, he gets sick and he comes to the hospital at some point, and he’s turned away. And that’s what he tells me. He’s turned away because they didn’t have an interpreter that day.

 

By the time I met him, two months have passed from that last appointment. He was really, really sick. And it made me think of how important our health is and how our health is our most important asset and how language barriers can really mess with that in the United States. I was so shocked by what he was telling me because I work in one of the best hospitals in the nation. So, I was like, how are we doing this?

 

And that really sparked my interest and my desire to do something beyond my role as an interpreter. And as an interpreter, you are very limited in what you can do in terms of advocacy.

 

So, I pursued further education, studied social work, became the most obnoxious student during my social work years because all I could talk about was language access and the limited English proficient population. Developed every paper on this and became known in school like sort of like, yeah, the language access person, the language access lady. But that’s how it started.

 

And then I decided to create my company because I had a few clients from my interpreting years. And as I was studying social work, one of the semesters I went to India, and I didn’t want to lose my clients here. I created my company here and told them, you know, I would like to subcontract the work. They accepted, moved to India. And that’s actually how I ended up creating the company. It was not to lose my clients.

 

And then I returned. I was like, OK, sort of deciding whether or not I wanted to pursue social work or just being a business owner. I worked for a little while as a social worker, having the business kind of like on the side. And then it took strength. I was asked to teach about how to work with interpreters for the state. And I did that. I created this training and then it became a bigger and bigger thing.

 

And so, I decided to become just an entrepreneur and try to combine all these knowledges into my business. It’s been five years since I created the company, but it’s been really only a couple since I became like a full-blown business owner.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, you have to give yourself some credit, Carol. I mean, in our industry, especially in ALC, you come across as an expert in language access. And that’s something that I think is a human right in a sense because people who cannot understand each other cannot access basic, you know, basic services, whether it’s health or education and so forth.

 

But I’m interested to hear a little bit about what has stood out to you from the time that you came out of academia, out of your education in terms of social work and where you saw, and you advocated for language access until today. What has stood out to you as a significant event or revolution in this industry that basically you think about and whether in a negative or in a positive way, it impacted you somehow?

 

Carol Velandia

Well, a revolution on this industry? Technology, obviously. And the main event that has happened in the last few years when I, after I created my company was COVID. And COVID really impacted everyone and especially those with limited English proficiency and indigenous languages. And I remember I had been only with the company sort of like not doing anything else, but the company for less than a year when COVID started. And I was like, wow, how can I leverage the available technology? And that’s how I came across different apps that made it possible to have 24-7 service and, you know, telephonic and video remote interpreting. So that was a big thing, a big point of inflection, I think, for me in my business. And I am sure for everybody, right, that we needed to have these services on a regular basis. And so, I jumped on it. I don’t know if that was question you wanted to ask, or I mean I don’t know if that’s what the aim of the question was.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Yes, like some people talk about, you know I’ve been in the industry since the 1990’s and translation memory was a big one and other people talk about machine translation, some people talk about COVID. For you what was the main event that you think about and that was a driver for your business?

 

Carol Velandia

Definitely COVID because it made me think, conceive my business differently and jump on the new technologies that were available and understanding how technology is an essential piece of providing successful services 24-7, because ultimately what I’m trying to promote is that is the idea that language access should be ubiquitous. It has to be available 24-7. It has to be everywhere, sort of like the peril to fight COVID. Language access should be an integral part of every business and every kind of effort.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, today I have invited you to speak with me on this podcast about a very important topic. Obviously, it’s dear to you and it impacts a lot of people in the United States and frankly, most of the Western Hemisphere. Language access is an important issue and that continues to create challenges for diverse communities, immigrants and all kinds of people who are joining the American, you know, bigger, larger community. Please give me some background on this topic. Where is the problem? What solutions are available and where are we headed?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes, well, we have a really interesting background on this because our country has never been monolingual. Since the time of independence in 1776, we have had a significant portion of the population that spoke a language other than English. We had about a fourth of the population that spoke German. And then, so we have a really, really rich history of multilingualism.

 

Then when the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, for example, a third of the population in the United States spoke French. And then there was another treaty that came in 1819 with Spain, the Adams-Onís Treaty, that where the country acquired the state of Florida and they spoke Spanish there. And then later, there was another, yet another treaty, Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico, where the United States annexed the state of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico. Most of the state of Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. And they spoke Spanish and multiple indigenous languages.

 

So, the proportion of people that spoke languages other than English has been significant from the time the country began. And another thing is that our founding fathers were visionaries and they decided not to have an official language because we have been always multilingual. And naming an official language was just a way to promote conflict in our territory.

 

So, having this in mind, I think it’s important for people to understand this part of our history because there are a lot of biases and there’s a lot of prejudice also about the fact that people that come here don’t learn English. And in fact, every time I give a talk here in the US, there is at least one person that asks, well, why don’t they just learn English? And I think that’s part of the problem with us having a blockage with embracing language access is because we think the solution is simply to learn English.

 

So, we need to understand that the US has always been a country with high numbers of immigrants. Immigration is part of who we are. And that’s the one thing that has not changed in our history is that we have always had influx of immigrants. There is an ebb and flow, but there is always immigration. And now in modern times, what’s the background.

 

Well, in 1964, with the civil rights movement, Title VI was created, which specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender and national origin. And national origin is a proxy for language. And this means that any program that receives federal funding is required to provide equal access to those programs to eligible citizens, regardless of their race, religion, or national origin.

 

Then in 1974, the Supreme Court case law versus Nichols ruled that the San Francisco United School District was violating the civil rights of the Chinese ancestry students by denying them meaningful opportunity to participate in public education programs.

 

And then fast forward that to 2000, President Clinton issued then Executive Order 13166, which is a guideline for organizations to design meaningful language access. And recently, as recently as 2021, the government issue yet another executive order. This time is 13985, which is focused on increasing equity in all federal programs. And sort of to remove all the barriers for the underserved communities. And it promotes efforts to remove the systemic barriers and provide equal access to opportunities and benefits.

 

So, we have not only a very rich history of multilingualism, but also pretty robust laws and regulations, not to mention, and I forgot to mention, perhaps the most important one is the Americans with Disabilities Act that also ensures the right to interpretation services for deaf and hard of hearing communities. So that’s the background. But the problem starts with us. Thinking that there is only one solution and not understanding the complexity of our community and the diversity of our community and not having tools to actually include them effectively. And that’s why I created that training that I mentioned earlier.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thanks so much for setting the stage, Carol. That was very detailed and very in-depth, but that’s eye-opening. As I said, I know you’re very passionate about language access and to make sure that people receive information in their own languages. Then basically that’s tearing down the barriers.

 

Can you give me a sense as to where this problem emanates from today? I know funding, as you mentioned, has significantly increased. Regulations playing a major part here. And across different levels of government and across different sectors or industries, we see that there is a lot more awareness about this. But where do we see a persistence of this problem today?

 

Carol Velandia

Excellent question. You mentioned funding, and I want to describe that part of the problem with language access and the impact of lack of language access is quite invisible in the sense that it’s hard to measure, or impossible, rather, to measure a negative. Like what happens if there is no language access? A lot of this gets unmeasured. So let me describe at least part of the problem in healthcare, for example, which is perhaps where there is better documentation and research.

 

A healthcare accounts for a fifth of the US economy. Between 25 to 40% of healthcare expenditures are considered wasteful spending. There was a study done by Donald Berwick and Andrew Hackbarth. And they described that this spending comes from at least six different factors, but the majority of the expense comes from just poor healthcare practices, among which is not providing language services or failures in care delivery and care coordination. They mentioned six different categories, but these two ones are the ones that I want to talk about because that’s where things like patient safety are involved. And language access is a key part of patient safety. I’m not sure how many hospitals realize this, but I hope they begin to realize how patient safety and language access go together.

 

And just a parenthesis here, language access is usually put under patient satisfaction or under some kind of administrative role. And I really think that if we connect that patient safety and language access, we would probably avoid some of the spending.

 

So anyway, these accounts for billions of dollars a year in wasteful spending. And the interesting thing about what they mentioned in this article is that the majority of all these expenditures come from just 5% of the patients. And these 5% of the patients are usually the patients that are underserved and the ones that have language barriers. If we don’t pay attention to this problem, we’re going to have even more wasteful spending. So many people are perhaps very concerned about the expense that language access is, but they fail to realize that there is a bigger expense without language access.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, about that, how does lack of language access or without having access to this specific service, how does it affect the minority community? What does it mean as a direct impact to them?

 

I know you mentioned that there’s no studies and it’s hard to measure that, but what are some of the visible and obvious things that could happen if communities cannot get basic healthcare or education or government services available to them in their own languages?

 

Carol Velandia

Well, for clarity, there are studies. What I meant to say is that people fail to measure what happens without language access. But there are studies about the impact of language barriers. In fact, if you are limited English, you are four times more likely to experience severe temporary harm at a hospital. And that’s why I was thinking and saying that it is a patient safety concern.

 

So, a person without English, it’s worse off than an English speaker. Four times more likely to experience severe temporary harm at a hospital when compared with English speaker. They are also more likely to have false longer lengths of stay and lack of compliance, which is where a lot of the problem comes from. Because in preventive care, they just don’t feel that they want to go to the doctor because the doctor doesn’t speak their language, for example. And so, they don’t comply, and their problem becomes worse and worse. Their disease that’s chronical, for example, gets to be critical. They end up costing more to the healthcare system when they come back in. It’s too late or it’s too critical.

 

There are other aspects in other industries or in other kinds of public services. For example, if you don’t speak English, you are more likely to confess to a crime you didn’t commit. Because there is no constitutional right for a limited English proficient person to have a language interpreter during an interrogation. That is another impact. And not to mention the impact on education and the new immigrants or the children of immigrants that have language barriers, how that impacts their education.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And let me also ask you about the impact of language access on the host communities in terms of economic participation of newer immigrants coming into our country. If they had more language access, would they be able to participate more in our economy by finding better jobs, by contributing to solve problems that they cannot solve due to language problems themselves? I’m not just talking about the contribution of the host community or the American community, but also of the immigrant community, the minorities that are coming in.

 

Carol Velandia

Oh, yes. Like if we were to have more tools, language access tools, we could take full advantage of their knowledge acquired in their countries. We have a lot of immigrants that come to this country that are experts on something but can’t express or can’t use their expertise because of the language barrier.

 

I was just talking to a friend yesterday. She’s very involved in education and advocacy in education. She was telling me about this precise problem, how there is such a lack of teachers, for example, in the US. Her sister, who is a teacher, she comes from Chile, is a professional teacher. She could join the workforce. My friend owns a bilingual school. But her teacher can’t be a professional teacher here because of the language barrier. We were talking about how this is impacting not only our society, but all the professionals that come here with ready knowledge to put to work, but they can’t. So that’s one example of what contributional work is missing because of language barriers.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, we talked about education. Let me actually ask you to give me some details on that and add some context. Can you tell me how does language access or lack thereof manifest itself in the education sector? What type of impact it has on students, their parents, the teachers, and the school environment as a whole?

 

Carol Velandia

OK, well, first of all, I must admit that this is where I have the least amount of experience, but I’m going to tell you from that experience and some of the research I’ve done.

 

But first of all, we have the largest number of immigrants in the world, about 44 million people are immigrants in the US. And that is just as big as the country of Argentina. The children of these immigrants, the people that come with different languages, will face significant challenges in their education if they are limited English. And because, you know, they will fail to understand teacher instructions, they will have difficulties associated with reading comprehension, writing, passing tests. They might end up being miscategorized to begin with, and their education might be, you know, delayed. Their performance might be mis-evaluated because of this language barrier. As you say, language barrier would not only affect the teachers, but the parents cannot be part of their education because they might not, they can’t understand what’s happening.

 

So, and you know how important it is that the family gets involved with the child’s education. It also affects the parents. And, you know, I think the teachers are doing the best they can to overcome this gap. And I think there are significant efforts and a lot of teachers that are interested in this topic and overcoming this topic. And they end up becoming almost social workers because the families have so many other needs. And language barriers are just one of them.

 

And so, a lot of the teachers get really involved in the children’s education, but also involving all of the problems that their new situation as immigrants brings along. They are also part of this problem as a whole. Not part of the problem, sorry, part of the composition of the context of this issue.

 

So yes, that’s how language barriers impact education. And education is the foundation of our society. It’s basically a place where we should pay attention to.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

While we were still talking about that and how it affects people, how this problem manifests itself, I know Carol, that your expertise and your background lies in healthcare. So besides education, it’s not just healthcare, so many other services and delivery of these services depend on language, medium, as you just mentioned.

 

So, in the pandemic being such a recent event that’s still fresh in our minds, how does this problem actually affect the healthcare service delivery, the medical society as a whole, that community? How do they handle, how do they grapple with this problem as a whole? And is there a solution in sight?

 

Carol Velandia

As far as healthcare, for example, I think that there are a lot of good tools for healthcare. Starting with legislation, well, we have executive order 13166 that details how to implement a language access plan, basically, or how to implement Title VI, basically. And it helps hospitals understand what their requirement is, the level of responsibility to the limited English proficient population. So, they have that available. And the technology and the industry has been a part of making it possible for the hospitals and the healthcare systems to deliver this service quite successfully because of technology and that’s a big, big part of making it a 24-7 kind of service.

 

The tools are there, but then the level of understanding and awareness is not there. And this is why I think we should, so we currently are presenting the solution. This is your solution for language barriers. You have a professional translator, sorry, professional interpreters, and the industry is attuned with these issues. And they are offering the solution. But I think that until there is a change and a shift of understanding from the professionals that use the language services and they become involved in the sense that they are part of the problem also, it’s not, I mean, in my experience, the way language barriers were approached was like, oh yes, those people that speak English and we have to solve the problem for them.

 

But we have to understand that we have to solve the problem for everybody, the medical community, the healthcare providers are part of the problem and the solution, meaning they have to really understand how it works and understand that they will face a limited English proficient person or a person with limited English proficiency at some point. Language access should not be conceived as something that maybe one day somebody will need it, but as an integral part of any kind of effort, any kind of training, especially when we talk about corporate training and diversity, equity, and inclusion training, and we never get to talk about language barriers as if they didn’t exist. We have to train people, healthcare professionals on this.

 

And in fact, shameless plug here, but this training that I described, effective inclusion through language access, I proposed it to the University of Maryland for the different public service professionals, you know, doctors, nurses, social workers, dentists, pharmacists, and lawyers. The future professionals. And several of those schools accepted the program and we are going to teach it in spring 2024.

 

And I’m so excited because that’s where we need to start changing our consciousness with regards to language access, is at that level when the people are training to be professionals. So that’s part of the relief that I see inside besides the technologies.

 

But the other piece is for the people that with limited English proficiency that understand that they have a right to effective communication and advocate for themselves. We do a lot of advocacies on their behalf, but I wish we would tell them, you know, you have this right, advocate for yourself, because if they knew they had that right, I can guarantee you they would be more vocal about it.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, congratulations on that initiative to raise this awareness for future professionals. I think that’s a very noble initiative and I want to congratulate you for that. But this thing on the topic of language access when we talk about it. There is so many other services that depend on language access or understanding. Can you elaborate on which ones are affected? Which services are affected, due to lack of language access?

 

And while we are adding it, the second part of the question is, which communities are at highest risk of being left behind due to lack of language access?

 

Carol Velandia

So, the first one is what… Sorry, would you mind repeating the question?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So besides healthcare and education, what other services are affected due to lack of language access for example, social welfare, there could be armed services, there could, there are so many government services that could be affected.

 

Carol Velandia

Yes.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Once you’ve answered that, the second part of the question is, which communities are at highest risk of lack of language access?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes, so all language access is an issue or a need across all public services. And so, we didn’t mention the court system. It is a key place where language barriers could be a big problem. As I said, many people confess to things that, to crimes that they did not commit because they didn’t understand what was going on in the interrogation room. And I have a few examples of men that were in prison for years. I don’t have the exact numbers right now, but I just remember reading about this project that is aiming to overturn those convictions.

 

So, in the justice system, there is a big need. And even though courts provide interpretation services, there is a part of that, of the process where there is no obligation to provide interpretation services, and that is in the interrogation room. And that is a key piece of how a person gets convicted. During interrogation, many people have just confessed to something they didn’t do because of lack of understanding, and they end up in jail. So that’s just one public service.

 

With the police, for example, that’s another public service that needs to have language access at all times, and I think they do the best they can with telephonic interpreters. And then there is social services, as you mentioned, a big need for language professionals because, again, because of the amount of immigrants coming every year to this country.

 

There are not only linguistic barriers, but also cultural barriers, and this is where my social work degree came so handy, is like understanding that the families of immigrants sometimes don’t know, very frequently, they don’t know what certain rules they need to observe, and they end up in big, big trouble because the difference in laws.

 

So, it breaks my heart to see families that are separated because of lack of understanding of a cultural aspect in the US that they don’t have in their countries, and they end up in big trouble. You know, there are many examples of this, and I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole, but that’s just another service.

 

So, all public services, religious services, and the communities that are most affected by this are not only the people with limited English proficiency, but the people that speak indigenous languages. And right now, I’m thinking of Central America and people that are coming from Guatemala and Mexico with other languages other than Spanish that get miscategorized as Spanish speakers because they come from Guatemala or Mexico, and they don’t receive the help that they need.

 

Also, there is a lack of professionals, professional interpreters in those languages, so I think they are the most at risk are the indigenous communities that speak indigenous languages.

 

Sponsor

This podcast is made possible with sponsorship from the American Heart Association. Sponsorship from Hybrid Lynx, a human-in-the-loop provider of translation and data collection services for healthcare, education, legal, and government sectors. Visit hybridlynx.com to learn more.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let me ask you about some issues that go beyond the direct impact of language access. We know that it is very common for family members, including children, to provide interpreting in healthcare settings. How does that affect families and communities? These people, first of all, there’s issues with privacy, but then there’s also issues, things that they shouldn’t know, or they shouldn’t be exposed to. Can you talk about that a little bit?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes. People fail to realize that if you ask a child to interpret highly complex vocabulary, that interpretation is not going to be accurate. And not to mention, as you said, the trauma for the child. Imagine a child having to interpret for their mom that she has cancer or an awful disease. And thankfully, that didn’t happen a lot in the hospital I used to work for, but it did happen. And I saw this problem happening with a family that I think spoke a Thai or some language that was not available at the moment. And there was this child interpreting at an eye clinic. And I mean, that vocabulary is something you study for.

 

So, asking a child to interpret is tremendously unfair for the child because you put them in a position to hear things they should not be hearing. And also, you don’t do well by the patient because the patient is not going to have the level of information that they need. And you’re not going to be doing well by the doctor either because the information coming back to the doctor is also going to be deficient. We hope that we can get rid of that issue, that we understand the impact to children, patients, and providers.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

You mentioned this earlier, Carol, that there seems to be this assumption that people should understand English, or the people understand English by default. And when they look at foreign languages or languages of other people that are non-English, they assume that funding should be allocated for languages of highest demand, highest volume. And in some cases, several priorities fight for the same number of dollars. So, you have, for example, language access, but at the same time, you have problems such as security, environmental protection and so forth. When decision makers think of language access, how can they justify allocating that funding to this specific priority, which is language access? How does it compete with other priorities?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes, well, let me think about this for a moment.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So basically, if you were to compare let’s say language access which is almost a fundamental right, a human right, compared to things such as security, compared to things such as… I don’t know, there are many other aspects where the dollars could be spent. This form of equality, how can they justify that this is a priority, more important, than some other place where the dollar should be spent?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes, well, I think that the problem needs to be understood from the equity perspective. And I think that this is what the latest executive order to advance equity is so important. I think that, for example, if we consider the $102 billion that are spending wasteful healthcare or wasteful expenditures in healthcare because of language barriers should sort of ring a bell in the decision-making process of like where we should allocate the majority of the funds. Because if we have all this money, $102 billion in wasteful spending, why don’t we invest much less than that amount in solving the problem of language barriers that account for part of this wasteful spending.

 

And the other thing is you mentioned how this allocation gets put towards the languages with highest diffusion. I think that we need to invest actually in promoting the professionalization of interpreters in Indigenous languages, for example, which account for the most disadvantaged population. We should probably invest in Indigenous languages more so than Spanish and Mandarin and other languages that are already kind of set. I think that these hidden costs in healthcare and the idea of providing better quality of services will have a positive economic impact. And being that healthcare is such a large part of our economy, where we can also have the highest economic impact here. And this is where we can change our practices. And the funding should go proportionally to this service.

 

I’m a big advocate to investing in healthcare. But that’s not to say it shouldn’t go to education or the court system. But healthcare is where… Remember, I conceive our health as the most important asset. This is all we have, especially immigrants. All they have when they come here is their body to work. So, they need to be healthy. And that’s why I promote investing in healthcare, these resources in healthcare.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you, Carol. Language access is, as you said, not just a priority for the public sector. All aspects of life depend on it somehow. Private sector is chronically affected due to lack of language access. In fact, most people in the private sector assume that everybody speaks English. Customers of large companies don’t get communication in their languages. What is the private sector’s role in ensuring language access for users of services and products?

 

Carol Velandia

Hey, I’m so glad you brought this up, Sultan, because this is exactly what we’re focusing on in my company, is to try to bring language access beyond the public services. And as you mentioned, underscore the need for language access in the private sector as well.

 

As I mentioned, we have adopted the framework of diversity, equity, and inclusion because the private sector is very invested in such practices. I bet you have heard about diversity, equity, and inclusion 10 times before you hear about language access specifically. We are trying to disturb that concept just to include language access as a missing component, as a key component that is missing to these efforts. Because with 29, approximately 29 million people in the US that don’t speak the English language, the private sector has a tremendous opportunity to design language access plan and make this population a part of these diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

 

The private sector has this opportunity to attract a growing population of immigrants and that will purchase their product and use their services. Language access is not only a social justice issue. It is a great differentiator and a competitive advantage if you have it in your business.

 

So, this is what we want to be known for at Equal Access. It’s sort of like the companies that the companies perceive us as the people that can bring this opportunity to them. Because as I said, we will be increasing social justice and we will provide better services, improve the quality of those services, meaning we are going to underscore the professionals behind these services because one of the things we are promoting is high quality interpretation, high quality translation. We are educating our clients in what it means to have linguists that are qualified.

 

So, by integrating language access in the public sector, we are going to be helping different fronts, the professionals, the limited English proficient population, as well as the business in this case. They will be doing well by doing good, basically. So, it’s a win-win for everybody.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. You talked about the different laws and executive orders and the types of regulations that exist today. Are they enough or is more regulation is needed to guarantee language access as a critical human need?

 

Carol Velandia

Okay. So, I think there are a lot of regulations and laws. Maybe we don’t need more laws. We need to be compliant with these laws because the laws are there, but people don’t follow them because perhaps the consequence is not really clear.

 

Let’s say you discriminate on the basis of language, you make, and you provide critical service, and you receive federal funding. Then the consequence, if you commit a language access violation, would be to defund your program. Well, that really has never happened. And I’m not advocating for that to happen. But what I’m trying to say is that we do have enough laws, but they don’t get, if they are not known by the population that is affected, meaning by the limited English proficient population, and they are not busy placing complaints, these laws are going to be just in paper.

 

So, that’s what I think we should be doing is to communicate this to the people with limited English proficiency and tell them they have a right to effective communication. And when they go to the hospital, they have a right to ask for effective communication, whether that’s over the phone or video or in person, they need to understand that right. And I think they don’t.

 

So, I think there are, I mean, I’m not saying that we should just rest in our laurels and say, oh, we have sufficient regulation. Probably we will need better laws in the sense that we have executive orders, but we don’t have a law, except for the Americans with Disabilities Act that protects the right to interpretation services for the deaf and hard of hearing. But it doesn’t protect the right of interpretation services for spoken language. But that law is a great piece of legislation that is strong. Executive orders can go away with the next president. That makes them weak. Because if the next president doesn’t want to have executive order 13166, he can say, okay, I single-handedly delete this law and that’s it. It has to, or I mean, it’s not even a law, it’s an executive order.

 

So, we need a stronger piece of legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yes. But we need people to know about these executive orders and these rights and promote them and fight for them.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, I’m sure you know that there is a shortage of talent in our industry. It’s exacerbated by the pandemic. In particular, certain languages and communities lack resources for enabling language access. We are both members of the Association of Language Companies, or ALC, and they have the Bridge Initiative that is trying to fill that gap with regards to lack of resources. Please tell us how is lack of resources contributing to this problem and is there a relief in sight for language access?

 

Carol Velandia

Yes. I mean, there is a lack of interpreters for indigenous languages. And I guess the relief in sight for this problem is that the government, the Department of Homeland Security just issued the Indigenous Language Access Plan, which is a vehicle for strengthening language services for indigenous migrants who are encountered and served in Department of Homeland Security programs and activities.

 

So, I think the Department of Homeland Security recognizes the importance of effective communication also with the people that speak indigenous languages. I think that perhaps language services providers should invest some of their efforts into finding talent or forming the talent. Educating the possible interpreters in indigenous languages. That’s perhaps the relief in sight is that we’re, at least the government or a part of the government, is paying more attention to this deficiency. Did I answer your question?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Carol, the pandemic was a good test for language technology, in particular, real-time virtual communications and interpreting, and your company being in that sector, I think it benefitted or learned about how to benefit and put that technology to the benefit of people. I’m interested to hear from you about the maturity of technology and how it is enabling language access for communities that are underserved or underrepresented.

 

Carol Velandia

Okay, so I think there are always opportunities to improve technology, and I love the fact that you are in that space and there are so many people in the language industry in that space, because that’s like the part of my skill set that’s the most efficient. I know how to use technology, but I’m not very involved in the creation of technology, but I totally think that technology of today that allows 24-7 service over the phone and through video is really what we need.

 

We need to use more of that, and it reminds me of a commercial that said, if you have a phone, you have a lawyer. Here in the US, there is a commercial that says that, and I think the same can happen for language access. If there is a phone, not even a smartphone, there is an interpreter. We need to promote language access through the technology that we have available. I’m sure the developments in technology will benefit the language access or will benefit the language industry and improve the problem with language access as it becomes available to people with limited English proficiency and business owners.

 

I think also it reduces costs for people that want to offer language services, but they don’t want to hire a person that is there or a number of people that are there 24-7. Technology helps also with the multitude of languages because a lot of people or a lot of business owners, when I ask, well, how is your language access plan going or do you have a language access plan? Their answer is usually, oh, yes, I have a bilingual person that speaks Spanish, and that’s it.

 

Technology helps overcome this concept that language barrier is only faced by Spanish speakers. Obviously, this depends on the context where in the US these questions get asked, but in general, people think, like, all I need to solve my language access problem is to hire a bilingual person. Technology is a beautiful offering that says, you know what, you actually can have as many interpreters as you need 24-7 in 200 languages. If you have a phone and need to sign up to my services, we can offer you this language access.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, can you talk about the responsibility and the role of language service companies or LSPs to address the need for language access? I mean, we are the enablers of this capability for government enterprises and so forth. Your company is at the forefront of this topic. I mean, it’s trying to solve this massive social problem that we are facing. Please describe how does the industry fill, can help to fill this gap?

 

Carol Velandia

Well, the industry has a tremendous opportunity with the language access framework. First of all, language barriers are universal and also contextual. Every time you go out of your country, you’re likely to face a language barrier. This is not only for language companies in the US. This could be applicable to anybody.

 

But we need to adopt a broader framework to conceptualize our business. We should promote the idea that we are offering language access as well as active. Which is a much bigger and important framework than saying we provide translation services, we provide interpretation.

 

The problem is we’re perhaps a little bit ahead of the curve as the concept of language access is not even generalized. And I didn’t realize this because I am involved in language access. I think everybody knows about language access. But a friend of mine from the industry who’s an expert in technology and app creation, made me notice and also an expert on SEO. He made me notice that language access is not necessarily a widespread concept. And the language industry needs to make language access a widespread concept. Every time you talk about your business, talk about language access and how you are solving that problem. If we take a bigger view of the problem, and that’s how we sell it to our client, then we are changing the culture around language access. I think that’s our responsibility as language services provider, broadening the framework.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I would like to learn more about the role of lobbying and gaining decision-maker support for language access. I know that Dr. Bill Rivers is doing a tremendous job on behalf of the industry, has been doing it for years, and ALC has initiatives in place such as ALC on the Hill that we recently took part in. How would you characterize the efforts of our industry in ensuring language access?

 

Carol Velandia

Let me send a greeting to Bill Rivers and a shout out. He’s another very passionate advocate for language access, and I admire him very, very much. And he’s doing everything he can to involve the language industry in lobbying. And I also want to commend you, Sultan, for being part of those efforts. I remember last year when we were in the Hill promoting this.

 

Yet, we need to increase these efforts, so I would describe them as petite, in the sense that we all need the numbers for these efforts. I really hope that all the members of the ALC attend the On the Hill event. Not just a handful of people that are working on advocacy. We need to understand that advocating for this right is the best thing we can do for our own business. Hopefully, the numbers increase on this and that we all participate in this effort and attend to the Hill. And again, it should be open to all language companies, not only in the United States. When we go to the Hill in the United States, we should bring companies like your company from Canada, from other places in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, because the importance of language access is not only local or social justice related. It’s also important for trade and a plethora of aspects, you know, commerce, et cetera.

 

So, I think the more people attend the advocacy event, the more companies attend, the better picture we can offer our legislators and the more awareness they are going to have.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, for those of us who are in decision-making positions and don’t know what actually language access really looks like, and you being an expert here, are there examples around the world where language access has been implemented successfully that serve as a good example or template for our communities?

 

Carol Velandia

Well, yes. I mean, I haven’t studied any one language access plan in a specific country. But I can tell you that I am part of the Global Coalition of Language Rights, and I am getting to interact with a lot of people from different countries and sort of hear what their programs look like.

 

And I would mention that, for example, Australia has really developed these language access efforts as deeply as possible. You know, all Australians have the right to communicate and engage with the Australian government and other essential services irrespective of their first language preference. English language ability and their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, it doesn’t matter. They can always engage in the government programs. And, you know, this is another country that has a rich cultural and linguistic diversity, just like the US.

 

I think, for example, my experience in India with over 23 official languages was very positive in the sense that, well, not at the very beginning, because the first part of the year when I lived there, I lived there in 2016 and 2017, I saw signs only in Malayalam. I live in the south of India. But then they started putting signs in English. And they have English, Hindi, and the state language has to be displayed with all the signage. I started to see more of that in 2017 because I felt illiterate when I was living there in 2016 because there were just a few signs in English. Now I would say that problem has been solved.

 

But honestly, I think the US is doing the best they can. I also admire Canada for the way they approach language rights and language access. I don’t know it in depth, but it’s definitely one of the countries I want to study in this pursuit. But we have a lot of examples around the world for multilingual countries that tackle language barriers. I just mentioned a few of them that could help us get informed in their standards.

 

So, for example, one person in the Global Coalition of Language Rights told me that for you to be a certified interpreter in Canada, you needed much more than 40 hours. I don’t remember the exact number. It was 300 hours, but it was something beyond we have here in the US. I think that’s where we have a lot of room for improvement is we need more training for interpreters and more professionalization of that role.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, what are your thoughts and advice for decision makers that are thinking about language access but haven’t prioritized it yet or for their areas of service delivery?

 

Carol Velandia

I would just tell them you’re leaving 9% of the market out of your reach. Why? I mean, yeah, there is no reason why we’re not trying to include that market into our efforts.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Very simple yet very effective. As we reach the end of this conversation, Carol, I would like you to say a few words about the importance of language access and the opportunities in this area for language service companies.

 

Carol Velandia

I think that true inclusion can only be achieved if we all have equal access. As the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court Justice said, if we want to be true professionals, we need to do something outside of ourselves, something to repair the tears of our community. Persons with limited English proficiency have been marginalized partly because their affliction is invisible.

 

However, we can change effectively when we raise the level of proficiency. When we raise our level of consciousness around language access. As a language services providers, we have to take advantage of this opportunity and try to fill this gap. And we need to create more spaces to train the people that join our industry and help our clients be educated on language access. That’s what I think is meaningful for us as industry or the language services space.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carol, that was a fantastic conversation. And what a beautiful story about how you started and how you’re involved and how you’re making a difference in the lives of so many people. I’m really impressed with how you found a problem and creatively came up with a solution, which is not just your business today, but helps people live better lives as American residents and citizens.

 

Language access indeed improves quality of life, as you just mentioned. And I hope we can continue this conversation in the future.

 

In the meantime, I wish you all the best with your initiatives and your drive to help people through language access. And with that, I want to thank you for your time to speak with me today.

 

Carol Velandia

Thank you, Sultan. It was an honor for me to be here. As you know, you are a person I admire, and I follow. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to bring this about and talk about language access, which is my favorite topic.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

OK, it’s time for my roundup of the interview and my analysis as to what has been discussed.

 

Language access is a fundamental human need that enables people to access services and products in their own languages. It also enables communities to interact, support and empower non-English speakers.

 

Carol mentioned that regulation governs language access in the US, but we are far from an ideal situation and too many people today get left behind for so many reasons, including lack of resources, lack of funding and more sadly, lack of interest.

 

I think it is our responsibility as an industry to promote and lobby for language access across every sector and vertical. We have a few strong voices who have tirelessly advocated for language access at different levels of government. We did mention Dr. Bill Rivers and the entire ALC board must be credited for being on the forefront of language access debate.

 

I believe this issue is not just confined to the United States population and countries like Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, and others in the Western Hemisphere must promote and support language access for their indigenous, citizen and immigrant populations because language rights are human rights.

 

That brings us to the end of this episode. I got to speak with a great leader and expert on the language access subject and the opportunity allowed me to learn so much. I believe as an industry, we have so much to learn. It means more business for us in simple words. I am hoping you learned at least one thing to apply to your business to make it better and that means I hit my goal today.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk Podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your platform of choice and give this episode a fantastic rating.

 

Until next time!