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Con Edison is one of the largest energy companies in the United States. It provides electric and gas service in New York City and Westchester County, New York.

The communities that Con Edison serves are highly diverse, as you might imagine. To accommodate people of all languages, cultures, and abilities, the utility company is piloting an exciting new program in which it is placing LanguageLine On-Demand Video Interpreting in six walk-in centers across New York City’s five boroughs and Westchester County.

Language services companies handle thousands of calls a day. Each call is vital in its own way.

Hiring qualified interpreters and training them to deliver accurate interpretation sessions is imperative for success. But it is only the beginning. The quality of an interpreter must be supported through performance management.

How can you make sure that your interpretation provider is prioritizing quality assurance and monitoring?

More than ever before, language services providers (LSPs) are essential partners in managing and growing modern organizations that welcome all people, regardless of language, culture, or ability.

Here’s why:

One in five U.S. households speaks a language other than English at home. That’s more than 65 million people. Another 10 million are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. There are more than 350 languages currently spoken in the U.S.

An immigration wave is coming.

Did you know that over the next four decades, almost 90 percent of U.S. population growth will come from immigration?

Or that nearly half of these individuals are expected to lack English proficiency? 

How do declining American birth rates factor into this shift? Where will these immigrants come from, and how will this change the face of the America we know today?

Interpreter quality is the lifeblood of on-demand interpreting.

Connect times and technological bells and whistles do not matter if the interpreter on the other end of the line is not fully capable of delivering the empowerment you desire. It is imperative that language services providers (LSPs) have a sophisticated method for recruiting the finest interpreters in the world to meet your needs.

When evaluating interpreter quality, it is helpful to break the subject into four sections:

1. Interpreter recruiting
2. Interpreter new hire training
3. Quality assurance, monitoring, and ongoing development and support
4. Procedures and policies to ensure safety and security of information

In this article, we will address interpreter recruiting. Future blogs will cover the other criteria above.

Hospitals and other healthcare organizations frequently grapple with understanding and fulfilling their communication responsibilities to patients who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

To help healthcare organizations achieve compliance, we are offering a webinar titled “Healthcare Providers: Understanding Communication Responsibilities to Patients Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.”

When Procter & Gamble started selling Pampers diapers in Japan, they used the classic image of a stork carrying a baby on the packaging.

They later discovered that while the legend of the stork is common in the U.S., Japanese parents tell their children a different tale. Instead of arriving by stork, babies arrive in giant floating peaches.

If language isn’t on your mind when thinking about the future of your organization, it should be. Finding a reliable language services provider is critical to the success of your organization.

Consider this: More than 65 million U.S. residents speak a language other than English at home. Another 10 million are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. The complexity of communicating with these individuals will only increase, given that immigration is expected to account for nearly 90 percent of population growth in the U.S. over the next 40 years.

Believe it or not, the linguistic and cultural hurdles you may be facing can be turned into enormous opportunities. To accomplish this, you’ll want to partner with a language services provider that has the interpretation and translation solutions necessary to take on these challenges with ease.

When trying to decide which language services provider (LSP) is right for you, the first thing to know is that not all LSPs are created equal. Much like companies within your industry, some players in the language services space are more formidable than others.

Learning a second language is hard work.

Bilingualism brings with it a level of language proficiency that is sufficient for most standard, everyday situations and conversations.

Unfortunately, many organizations feel they have their language needs covered because they have a bilingual person on staff. This is typically not the case for several reasons.

Today in the United States, one out of every five of our neighbors speaks a language other than English at home—that’s more than 64 million people. Another 10 million are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Many struggle to communicate as they navigate their everyday lives. A doctor’s visit, a traffic stop, a parent-teacher conference, or a trip to the bank—things we take for granted—can be very difficult for these individuals. As most of us would, they may feel embarrassed, frustrated, or excluded.

Whereas this lack of understanding is distressing, the experience of being understood is empowering. Language access can be far more than transactional—the mere exchanging of words, much as one would exchange one currency for another. When done right, language access is transformational. Believe it or not, the language and cultural hurdles you’re facing today can be turned into enormous opportunities.

For this to happen, you’ll need a partner that can take these challenges and help you manage them with ease. Language services providers (LSPs) provide the interpretation and translation services you’ll need. But which LSP is right for your organization?