Because of our work in the healthcare industry, we fall under the federal regulations for HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act).  As part of complying with the HIPAA Privacy regulations, all employees are required to take and complete a one hour HIPAA Awareness Training annually.  This training provides an overview of the HIPAA Privacy regulations as well as information and guidelines on each person’s responsibilities under HIPAA to keep information private and confidential.

Each employee must pass a test covering the following items:

Introduction to HIPAA

Transactions, Code Sets, and Identifiers

Privacy

Security

ARRA/HITECH Act of 2009/2010

Implementation

In addition to annual HIPAA training and testing, both CLI employees and contractors must sign a Statement of Neutrality and Confidentiality at the time of hire. All contractors must pass a criminal background check and must be versed in conduct, procedures, and the professional code of ethics during the hiring process.

CLI closely monitors adherence to confidentiality policies by evaluating all customer service employees and independent contractors on a regular basis throughout the year. All contractors are required to have a private, secure space to work, a land line telephone, and a shredder for all notes at the end of their shift. All internal CLI employees have a security card badge to access the building and work within rigorous IT security standards.

Additionally, CLI is Safe Harbor Certified and maintains compliance with the OFAC, EPLS and OIG.

If you have any questions regarding our privacy policies and procedures, please feel free to contact Jen Schade at jenscertifiedlanguagescom.

This month we would like to recognize Portuguese interpreter Stephanie Cooper for her outstanding professional and customer service accomplishments.

Here is a short interview with Stephanie:

What languages do you interpret?

I interpret Portuguese, Spanish, and Hebrew. For CLI, I interpret only Portuguese.

How long have you been an interpreter?

I have been an interpreter for over 15 years.

Do you hold any special certificates or awards?

I was certified by ATA* in 2001 (Portuguese>English). I passed the test the first time.

What city do you live in?

I live in Philadelphia, PA

What is your favorite aspect of providing interpreting services?

I like interpreting service because of the variety of situations and responses one has to deal with on a daily basis. The important thing is to keep a positive attitude, and remember that you are there only to facilitate communication.

Thank you Stephanie for your continued customer service excellence and for participating in our Interpreter Spotlight!!

*American Translators Association

Reach your target market and support the Association of Language Companies at the same time! With opportunities to sponsor, exhibit and/or advertise, you can make the personal connections so important to your business, gain the visibility you need and become an integral part of ALC.

Advertise
Advertise on the ALC website and gain the visibility you want to your primary target market. Buttons and skyscrapers are available on select pages. For more information and rates, click here.

The ALC Update is now accepting advertising, as well. Make the most of this opportunity to increase your visibility with every ALC firm and employee. For more information contact infoalcusorg  (infoalcusorg)  .

Exhibit and Sponsor

Exhibiting and sponsoring at the ALC Annual Conference demonstrates your support for ALC and its members and brings attention to your company. Enjoy the exclusivity of being a sponsor and exhibitor. Because the number of opportunities is limited, this is a prime way to position your company to stand out from the rest!

You won’t want to miss the most exciting ALC conference ever! Join your ALC colleagues in New Orleans, May 16-19, 2012 for this once a year opportunity to reach your target market! Exhibit and/or sponsor a package or event at the conference and demonstrate your support for ALC and its members while bringing attention to your company. For more information, Grace Jan at 240-404-6479 or gjanmgmtsolcom  (gjanmgmtsolcom)  .

Click here for more information!

There are a lot of subtleties in language. Regions of every country have their own dialects, sentence structure is different for different languages and each dialect can have multiple types of slang.

Raytheon BBN has been given the almost-impossible task of developing a device that can perform two-way speech-to-speech translations, among other things. Now, I don’t doubt a comprehensive translator can come from this, I doubt that any device can effectively translate human communication.

The reason actual, human translators are so useful is because they master languages in order to make sure subtleties are not lost. Words develop entirely new meanings depending on regions and social status. Speaking from personal experience, a person from New England using the word “wicked” in a sentence is not using a dictionary definition of wicked (unless, in fact, they are using the dictionary definition of wicked). A translator can recognize dialects and slang, guaranteeing that there are no misunderstandings. Any device that wants to be nearly as effective as a human translator needs to be able to understand the context of each word depending on the region and its position in the sentence.

A device that would translate speech would also need to be able to deal with incredibly thick accents. Even native speakers will have their own way of using their language. There are clear differences in how someone from Boston speaks when compared to someone from the South, or even between different cities in the same state. In countries that don’t have such widespread communication, the ones were translators are needed most, accents can sound like another language even if they aren’t using a different dialect.

Slang is an entirely different beast for a device that performs translation to deal with. They can be entire phrases that aren’t supposed to be taken literally (a lounge lizard was not a reptile) or words that are used to mean something other than the definition (the wicked example). Each dialect can have its own slang, and being able to distinguish between dialects and whether or not a word is being used as slang are skills a human translator would have that a machine would have difficultly replicating.

In a place where any slight error in communication can lead to a loss of life, it’s important that we don’t forget just how complicated language is. There’s a reason human translators are still an important part of diplomatic relations and businesses.

Originally posted here.

Click here to read the LEP Data Brief from the Migration Policy Institute, or visit www.migrationinformation.org for more information.

Here is a little from Amira herself:

I’m an Arabic, Chaldean and Assyrian interpreter. I’ve been an interpreter for 5 years now. I don’t hold any awards or [official] certifications but I have an academic and practical background in medicine. I reside in Arizona.  My favorite aspect of providing interpreting service is working with diverse range of fields, in particular the medical field. It is such a thrill when I assist in delivering babies and hear their first cry on the phone.
To read more of our Interpreter Spotlights, check out our “Interpreter Profiles” category in the right-hand sidebar.

COLUMBUS, Ind. (AP) — Elsa Miller looked at the 17-year-old boy, listened carefully as he explained in Spanish the chest pains he was experiencing and relayed his words in English to Dr. Dekui Zhang, who was examining the boy at Volunteers in Medicine.

Miller, standing behind the seated doctor, also relayed to the boy questions from Zhang, who doesn’t speak Spanish.

She has served as a medical interpreter for Volunteers in Medicine for more than six months and represents a local solution to a nationwide push to promote certification of medical interpreters for safety reasons.

Because of the growth of the non-English-speaking population in the U.S., and federal laws that require services be understood by people with limited English skills, medical interpreters are in increasing demand.

“Persons who are bilingual are not necessarily interpreters,” said Laura Hurt, director of Volunteer Services at Columbus Regional Hospital. “They have to know medical terminology, learn the role of the interpreter and a code of ethics.”

No nationwide medical interpreter standards exist. Different organizations offer medical interpreter certifications, but few states endorse them. Indiana is not one.

Columbus Regional Hospital used a grant to pay for 22 adults, including five of its staff members and 11 students, to participate in a medical interpreter training program, called Bridging the Gap. The program is offered by Cross Cultural Health Care Program, a nonprofit organization that helps underserved communities receive full access to quality health care that is culturally and linguistically appropriate.

Hurt said health care officials here hope to use the program to create a bank of interpreters for community organizations. For example, people could call Su Casa Columbus to request a certified interpreter.

Miller, also a court interpreter, has volunteered at VIM for 10 years, but only occasionally as an interpreter until she took the course.

“I do this to increase my vocabulary in the medical field, and I like helping people,” Miller said.

Growing need

The non-English speaking population of the U.S. grew 140 percent from 1980 to 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Also according to the Census, Bartholomew County’s population grew by 5,359 people since 2000, and Hispanic and Asian residents accounted for 83 percent of the growth. The county added 3,164 Hispanics and 1,274 Asians.

Locally, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Indian languages most commonly require the help of a medical interpreter, Hurt said.

Carol Fogler, the English as a Second Language parent liaison at Taylorsville Elementary, took the Bridging the Gap course in Indianapolis this spring.

“I go on several mission trips . and I wanted to be fully equipped to interpret medical terms and emergency situations,” she said.

Fogler said she’s noticed that she has become more of a passive facilitator when she’s interpreting medical information between parents of students and school nurses.

“In the past I might step in and offer thoughts and words, and now I just allow (them) to communicate,” she said.

Federal law also creates a need for medical interpreters.

Executive Order 13166, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, requires federal agencies and agencies that receive federal funding to provide services in a manner that people with limited English proficiency can understand.

The 17-year-old boy whose condition Miller interpreted to Zhang said he liked having an interpreter present, even though he knew some English.

“It is very helpful because it helps me understand the things I can’t, and it makes me feel better,” the boy, who asked that his name not be used, said through Miller.

Zhang said most doctors lack the time to learn another language because of the time spent treating patients or learning new medical information.

“Even though we do a thorough exam, without communication we can’t treat (patients),” he said.

Originally posted here.

Certified Languages International (CLI) provides high-quality interpreting and translating services to hospitals, government entities, and public and private businesses throughout the United States.

In the event of a natural or manmade disaster, it can be presumed with some certainty that medical facilities in the affected region will experience a dramatic increase in volume, resulting in a dramatic increase in the need for language services.

Recognizing the importance of maintaining languages services in such a scenario, CLI has created and implemented a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and an Emergency Preparedness Plan (EPP):

• The BCP provides a planned response in the unlikely event of a significant disruption to CLI’s ability to deliver language services.
• The EPP is a planned response by CLI to natural or manmade disasters that result in a dramatic increase in the need for language services.

In addition, CLI has an ongoing Risk Assessment program that ensures regular review and proactive planning.

Business Continuity Plan

The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) provides a planned response in the unlikely event of a significant disruption to CLI’s ability to deliver language services.

Our two Call Centers (Portland, OR and Phoenix, AZ) are designed to provide redundancy, capacity, and disaster recovery fail over to the surviving office.  Both offices have sufficient servers, phone infrastructure, and mirrored databases to provide on-going business operations in the unlikely event of a disruptive event at either site.  By having the second office located in Arizona, CLI achieves the added value of geo-diversity with the Portland, OR area.

In simple terms, the BCP addresses three types of service disruptions, increasing in severity and impact:

As an additional measure, CLI has entered into a Mutual Aid pact with another Over-the-phone provider, whereby our entire database is rerouted to their facility remotely, from our back-up data storage site, offering total transfer from/to the secondary provider, whether it is CLI or the other provider.  This will allow seamless provision of service without interruption.

Emergency Preparedness Plan

The Emergency Preparedness Plan is our planned response to natural or manmade disasters that result in a dramatic increase in the need for language services.

Our goal is to respond to any emergency in such a way that the reaction and subsequent actions taken are:

1)      Seamless to the point that the customer does not notice any change or interruption in service, until they are notified in our Customer Notification Procedure (when necessary).

2)      Sufficient to ensure successful handling of the additional volume and subsequent need our customers will experience as a result of an emergency.

The list of possible emergencies for which CLI needs to be prepared is long.  Some most likely and common emergencies include:

• Natural Disasters
• Manmade Disasters (War/Industrial Accidents/Terrorism)
• Infrastructure breakdowns (Severed fiber-optic telecom cable, Industrial sabotage, and destructive computer viruses).

Any disaster is unique, but CLI has developed a matrix to be used in case of any disaster. In the event of an emergency, CLI activates an emergency management team, each with specific responsibilities from the following categories:

• Information Technology
• Communications
• Staffing
• Facilities
• Customer Notification

Members of the Emergency Management Team carry each carries an emergency contact card with mobile phone, home address and phone, personal email address, etc.  The team members are available 24 hours a day.

Although each manager has specific tasks to accomplish as listed above, it is the responsibility of the entire team to ensure that each of the 5 areas are covered. This ensures that all aspects of the emergency are dealt with in the case of one manager being unavailable.  When an emergency or exercise occurs, the 5 team members join to assess the extent of the emergency, and to draw up a specific plan of action based on the particulars of the emergency.

Emergency Management Infrastructure:

CLI has an infrastructure in place, which allows increase and/or portability of the information management that is the core of our service.

• To handle the increase in volume which is to be expected in the event of a natural or manmade disaster emergency, CLI always maintains N+ 40% Circuit capacity, so that there is always excess capacity than can be use to handle increased call volume.
• All administrative workstations at CLI have been configured to be used as an additional CSR work station.
• All Administrative staff receives cross training in Operations. This allows CLI to effectively double its operational capability within minutes of an emergency. The Emergency Management Team coordinates this change over.
• CLI has two Call Centers (Portland, OR and Phoenix, AZ), designed to provide redundancy, capacity, and disaster recovery fail over to the surviving office.  Both offices have sufficient servers, phone infrastructure, and mirrored databases to provide on-going business operations in the unlikely event of a disruptive event at either site.  By having the second office located in Arizona, CLI achieves the added value of geo-diversity with the Portland, OR area.
• Our communications platform utilizes multiple carrier vendors, with separate ingress/egress through the business park.  We have agreements in place to provide the ability to shift call traffic to the surviving Carriers if necessary.  Because we provide emergency services, the Vendor has flagged our accounts and circuits as “Medical Emergency” accounts, providing instant access to a live engineer who will can make the necessary changes in service, and investigate our service issue prior to any other service calls.
• The interpreters used by CLI are located across the U.S. Our business model encourages using interpreters wherever they are, which has resulted in a very broad regional base of interpreters. In case of an emergency that cuts off service to one part of the country, CLI will merely utilize a different interpreter of the same language located in another region of the U.S. CLI is confident that it has sufficient coverage of the languages which will be needed, duplicated in a myriad of different geographical regions.

No one can predict and prepare for all emergencies. CLI believes that by having a team established to manage an emergency, along with the infrastructure which gives us the tools to react to that emergency, we can deal with whatever emergent need we might encounter.

In healthcare settings, many providers prefer to have an in-person interpreter.  In many instances, however, a telephone interpreter is needed, preferred or more cost-effective.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act mandates that patient care not be delayed or affected by a patient’s limited English proficiency.   This means that when an in-person interpreter is not available for any reason, a provider should not re-schedule the appointment for a later date.  Instead, they should use a telephone interpreter if at all possible.

According to a study done at Cambridge Health Alliance comparing on-site, telephonic and video interpretation, many patients actually prefer over the phone interpreting (OPI).

When asked about their preference for OPI, patients referred to the increased privacy of not having a third person in the room when being examined. They also stated they did not want to see a community member they knew who worked as an interpreter in their community hospital.

Here are some examples of when OPI can save both time and money while ensuring Limited English Proficient patients (LEPs) receive timely access to the healthcare services that they require.

• When an on-site interpreter is unavailable it is generally advisable to use a telephone interpreter versus re-scheduling the appointment to a later date.
• Patient reminder calls or follow-up calls– Simply call our toll-free number and we will connect you to an interpreter and dial out to the patient’s contact number for you (to numbers within the U.S. and Canada).  There is no extra fee for multiple party calls.
• When a patient shows up at the emergency room or registration, it will put the patient at ease to be able to communicate with staff until an on-site interpreter arrives.
• Short appointments – If you need less than __ minutes of communication time with an LEP patient it is more cost effective to use telephone interpreting than an on-site interpreter.  (Calculate OPI vs. in-person rates for your client).

• When you receive a call from an LEP patient who speaks very little English you can access our services quickly.  Try to establish what language the caller needs.  Then, state simply, “Please wait while I get an interpreter.”  You can then put them on hold, call our toll-free number and once an interpreter is on the line, simply conference them all together.
• On those occasions when an LEP patient prefers to use their own adult friend or family member as the interpreter, it is recommended that a provider confirm that all information is being interpreted correctly.  If an on-site interpreter is not available, and staff suspect that not everything is being interpreted correctly, or that there is any other type of issue going on, you can require a telephone interpreter be connected to assist.
• Revenue collection is very important to the financial health of any provider.  It is to your benefit to ensure that accounts receivable staff, utilize telephone interpreting when attempting to collect payment from LEP patients.

Our healthcare customers commonly use OPI in the following areas:

Administration

• Finance (billing, collections, vendor support)
• Appointment scheduling and reminders
• Switchboard
• Patient & Guest services
• Medical Records
• Registration/Admitting

Allergy and Immunology

Audiology

Behavioral Health

Breast Cancer Care

• Mammography
• Consulting

Cardiology

• Cardiac Care
• Cardiac rehab

Care Coordination

Dermatology

Diabetes

Education

Emergency Services

• Trauma
• Urgent Care

Endocrinology

ENT

Family Practice

Gastroenterology

Hematology

Home Care

• Home Medical Equipment
• Hospice

ICU

Infectious Disease

Internal Medicine

Nephrology

Neurology

Nutrition and Health Services

Obstetrics & Gynecology

• Annual Exams
• Family Birth
• Labor & Delivery
• Lactation consulting
• Neonatal ICU
• Women’s Health

Oncology

• On-going Chemotherapy appointments

Ophthalmology

Orthopedics

Pediatrics

• Clinics
• Specialists

Pharmacy

Physical Therapy/Rehab/Occupational Therapy

• Particularly follow-up appointments where an interpreter can be used for the beginning and end of the appointment.  It is recommended that an on-site interpreter be used (if available) for the initial appointment.

Podiatry

Pulmonary Services

Radiology

• X-Rays
• Ultra Sound

Rheumatology

Security

Sleep Disorder Center

Surgery

• Admitting
• Pre-surgery orientation
• Post-op/Recovery
• In-patient
• Out-patient
• Short Stay
• Anesthesiology
• Urology

Situations in which face-to-face interpretation is recommended by the team of providers.

• Combative
• Confused
• Head Injury
• Mentally ill
• Speech/hearing problems
• Trauma
• Children under the age of 3 years

Conversations and/or circumstances that are highly sensitive in nature.

• Child abuse
• Worsening medical conditions
• Life-threatening situations (e.g., cancer, stroke, heart attack)
• Patients on ventilators or with tracheotomies
• Family conferences
• Consent forms (will be done by phone UNLESS provider is uncomfortable due to extenuating circumstances).
• Patient teaching that will require hands-on instruction (i.e.: DNCC teaching)
• Sexual assault cases
• Fetal Demise

*The information to create this list was compiled from surveys taken by a wide range of medical providers across the country.  In many instances, particularly emergency situations, it is recommended that a telephone interpreter be used until the face-to-face interpreter arrives.

Published July 28, 2011 at www.marketingprofs.com

In classic sci-fi movies, contests between machines and humans almost always end with the machine’s demise due to the stress of competing with superior human reasoning power. These days, machines beat humans on game shows, computers win at chess, and the quality of machine translation (MT) improves every year.

Both human and machine translation have a place in our work, and each can be used when taking marketing content global.

Let’s take a look at three types of translation techniques, their definitions, and what content they are most appropriate for:

1. Human translation
2. Pure machine translation
3. Machine translation with human editing

1. Human Translation

Definition

A professional linguist (most often, an in-country native speaker) reviews your project and, using guidelines agreed on beforehand, translates it to the language you require. The goal is to speak to your audience in the most natural, effective way. You can expect human translations to be free of idiomatic errors and to flow naturally and fluently.

Advertising and marketing projects can be “transcreated,” which means using your headlines, copy, scripts, and product names as the starting point. Your material is then creatively translated into culturally sensitive language that will appeal and make sense to your global audience.

Best candidates: Projects that need to convince, persuade, build trust, inspire, educate, entertain, or sell your product. For example:

• Print and broadcast advertising
• Marketing and branding materials
• Store signage
• Social media
• Product and brand names
• Website content
• Multimedia (e.g., Flash, voiceovers, etc.)

2. Pure Machine Translation

Definition

Pure machine translation is a computer-generated attempt to reproduce the language reasoning that human brains perform. Because translation is all about interpretation of meaning, our brains perform loads of cultural assessment, analyzing nuances and expression to fully comprehend language. Our brains are able to assess these nuances and translate them. Machines have not yet been able to do that, even with the simplest types of text.

Rules-based machine translation dates back to the Cold War, but today there’s a new way of approaching machine translation called “statistic-based translation.”

To perform statistic-based translation, a search engine delves into the billions of words and word pairings on the Web and produces statistically good matches for the way things have been said in one language with the way they’ve been said in another. And tools are available that apply some grammar rules to the translated material, producing some fairly decent results.

However, you’ll still find thousands of often-hilarious examples of the pitfalls and limitations of machine translation on restaurant menus and store signs—and sometimes, in important business communications—around the world.

Best candidate: Personal use. Here are some examples:

• Looking up a word or phrase and translating it into your native language, or vice versa
• Travel aid—translating restaurant menus, directional signage, maps, and more
• Just for fun—tweets, Facebook updates, quick notes to friends or family
• Getting the general sense of a short piece of text when exact details are not important

3. Machine Translation With Human Pre- and Post-Editing

Definition

This hybrid is akin to a cyborg: It’s a more serious, controlled machine-translation software used by professionals with lots of up-front prep work.

Here’s how it works. A linguist goes through the project first, then “trains” the machine-translation engine to translate properly. For example, the linguist will feed long lists of words with double meanings into the software, essentially tweaking the software’s rules to tailor the localization to a specific project or client.

After the material is sent through the software, the linguist will look through the first few thousand words to check for mistakes and, if necessary, will retrain the software to interpret rules correctly. The material will go through again and will be reviewed by post-translation editors who make minimal changes to ensure that the material is technically accurate and understandable to readers.

Those translations will definitely not be at the level of fluency of human translation. But if you don’t have the budget to localize those 10,000 data sheets, human-aided machine translation could be a great solution for you.

Best candidates: Large-volume projects of more than 500,000 words

• Projects that require a very large volume of words to be translated and therefore justify the considerable setup time
• Straightforward text
• Technical manuals and data sheets
• Safety instructions or documents that must be posted by law (or anything that needs to be accurate, but where style isn’t the first priority)
• Customer reviews on your website
• Large internal documents that are not consumer-facing

* * *

When making decisions about which localization method to go with, give careful consideration to the type, size, and audience of your project; and, of course, keep your customers in mind, too.

One thing’s for sure: There isn’t a machine on earth that can help you make those very human decisions.
Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/5541/human-vs-machine-clash-of-the-translation-titans#ixzz1TWMR8U9H

Ora Solomon is vice-president of operations and sales at Acclaro, an independent translation and localization firm. Reach her via osolomonacclarocom  (osolomonacclarocom)   or follow her on Twitter. For more, read the Acclaro blog.