Thread: callers who speak a foreign language, firm uses interpreters

July 19, 2008, 10:22PM
Help's nearby, if not the 911 worker
For callers who speak a foreign language, firm uses interpreters around the globe


By DANE SCHILLER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

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Emergency workers answering the city's 911 calls hear it all: people screaming, fighting, crying, dying and even giving birth.

But when it comes to Houston's challenges — such as when a panicked caller speaks Fulani, Dinka or countless other foreign languages — they need help.

Because of its increasingly diverse population, Houston and other major cities are hard-pressed to field enough foreign-language-speaking 911 operators, let alone have them available around the clock.

As a result, the Houston Emergency Center, housed in a fortified high-security building on North Shepherd, reaches out to Language Line Services, a California-based company that can connect a call with a native-speaking interpreter in any of 18 time zones.

That would mean somebody calling from the scene of a crash on Loop 610 might end up speaking with an interpreter in Mumbai, India.

During the first six months of this year, the company handled 7,102 Houston-area calls in 32 languages, according to city records.

Earlier this month, a Houston caller needing help in Mandarin was connected with an interpreter in London, and a person speaking Spanish was connected to Panama.

"Houston is a very large American city, but it is also an extremely international city," said Louis Provenzano, president of Language Line Services, which has interpreters speaking 176 languages, even Acholi, spoken in Uganda, and Yupik, spoken by Eskimos.

Falling in line with Houston's demographics, the emergency calls needing interpreter assistance were mostly Spanish, followed by Vietnamese and Mandarin.

Three of the least common were the African languages of Oromo and Fulani, as well as Nepali, from Nepal.

While significant to each person in dire straits, the number of emergency calls needing a Language Line interpreter is just a slice of the approximately 9,000 emergency calls received each day.

Farming out the 91,692 minutes of interpretation last year for more than 14,500 calls cost $82,910, according to city records.

But the amount of money that is spent on interpreter services is dropping, as the city has hired more in-house Spanish speakers to answer emergency calls, said David Cutler, director of the Houston Emergency Center.

Several years ago the city, which started using the company in the 1980s, was spending about $350,000 a year on help, he said.

"We don't have call takers that speak every language spoken in Houston on a given day," Cutler said.

Most callers, though, speak at least some English, he said.

"You get some people in that transition period, they are new to the United States and kind of half speak the language," he said of the immigrant population.

The money is well spent, Language Line's Provenzano said.

"Very often the difference between life and death is being understood," he said.

When emergency call takers can't identify the speaker's language, the call can be routed directly to a company specialist, he said.

Maria Guijarro, who was born in Mexico but raised in California where she works at Language Line's main call center, has handled emergencies in Houston and elsewhere.

"As soon as I open my line, they are screaming, crying, yelling; I try and calm them down first," she said of callers. "You have to have a strong voice and strong attitude."

Guijarro said calls can come fast and furious and involve a wide range of emergencies — from children in distress to a woman giving birth.

"There's a lot of people that can speak broken English, but I'm there to make sure their message is getting across," she said.

dane.schiller@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5897237.html

ENGLISH ONLY

Are these people visiting Texas or are they illegals?

"Very often the difference between life and death is being understood," he said.

Exactly.....which is all the more reason we have 1 common language.