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When Jamieson Brill answers a crisis call from a Spanish speaker on the recently launched national 988 mental health helpline, he rarely mentions the word suicide, or “suicido.”

Brill’s family is from Puerto Rico. He knows that just discussing the term in some Spanish-speaking cultures is so frowned upon that many callers are reluctant to even admit they’re calling for themselves.

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Getting vital information is critical in times of emergency. Operators in Louisville, KY, are using 911 interpreters to ensure that language barriers aren’t barriers at all during matters of public safety.

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911 dispatchers are typically the first voices someone hears at potentially the worst moment of their life, but what happens if those two people don’t speak the same language?

“Greenville County (South Carolina) is very international,” Greenville County E-911 Director Rick Blackwell said. “More international than most folks probably realize,”

LanguageLine has been assisting in situations like these for more than 40 years. In fact, our company was co-founded by a police officer in 1982 as a way to assist individuals in exactly this situation.

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Experiencing an emergency is frightening – even more so if you speak a language other than English. This is often the case in Toronto, which is among the most international cities in the world.

Known across the globe as a multicultural city, there are more than 200 languages spoken by its residents, to say nothing of its visitors.

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When you’re in an emergency and you need help, sometimes it’s hard to even dial the phone, let alone find the right words to say to a 911 dispatcher. So imagine if English wasn’t your first language. In an emergency, you’d still need to make yourself understood so that you could get the right help in the right place.

The State of Minnesota uses LanguageLine Solutions to provide 911 interpretation services over the phone.

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