San Diego Expands Language Access with New Translations of Council Business
The San Diego Union-Tribune (09/09/24) By David Garrick
San Diego’s steadily increasing diversity has prompted city officials to make summaries of City Council meetings available in Arabic, Spanish, Tagalog, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Laotian, and Vietnamese.
The translated summaries, which had been available only in English before the new program started in early September, list each item the council is scheduled to consider with a one- or two-sentence description. But the summaries don’t include the much longer and more in-depth staff reports, PowerPoints, and other supporting documents the city provides for most agenda items. Translated summaries are available only for meetings of the full council, not for meetings of the council’s many committees or other city boards and panels.
City Clerk Diana Fuentes said the goal is to enhance accessibility and engagement. “By providing these translations, we hope to make our meetings more inclusive and accessible for all,” Fuentes said. “I am committed to ensuring that all members of our community have the opportunity to engage with their City Council.”
Fuentes said she has relied on her bilingual staff and professional translation services to ensure the summaries are clear and understandable. In a related effort to help San Diegans understand how their city government operates, Fuentes has added a glossary of terms commonly used at council meetings. The 11-item glossary defines meeting minutes, adjournment, consent agenda, proclamation, ordinance, resolution, non-agenda public comment, and other terms. Like the agenda summaries, the glossary is also translated into the same eight languages.
“We recognize that clear communication is vital for effective civic engagement,” Fuentes said. “This new resource will help bridge language barriers and provide our residents with the information they need to participate fully in local government.”
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Demand for Interpreting at NYC Homeless Shelters Has Spiked Since 2020
Slator (09/25/24) By Seyma Albarino
New York City’s homeless shelters have seen a staggering rise in interpreting requests since 2020. According to a September 2024 Mayor’s Management Report (MMR), requests for over-the-phone interpreting (OPI) increased from 18,660 in 2020 to 107,083 in 2024.
The rise in interpreting requests follows a massive influx of migrants and asylum seekers, with a reported 210,000 coming to New York City since 2022.
At the same time, New York’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) has seen an 89% increase in DHS shelter occupancy compared to the end of 2022. According to the MMR, “tens of thousands” of migrants remain at DHS sites and in emergency shelters run by other city agencies.
The MMR attributed the increase in requests in part to more participating shelters and greater client/staff awareness of language services. However, the report doesn’t indicate what percentage of DHS site and shelter residents have limited English proficiency, nor does it quantify what portion of DHS’s daily or annual expenses are for language services.
New York City is not the only metropolitan area struggling to house and accommodate new migrants, with cities such as Chicago requesting billions of dollars in aid from the federal government. Exact numbers of migrants in major cities, and the costs associated with housing and other services, tend to vary since few estimates are comprehensive, but current data show no signs of a slowdown.
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Kentucky Mother Worries New Rule Will Affect Education
Lex18 News (09/01/24) By Alex Barber
Some Kentucky students who rely on interpreters in the classroom could see changes soon, changes that would affect how interpreters get re-certified and renew their licenses.
The Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA) is one of three certified exams available to become an interpreter. The EIPA allows interpreters to work with students from kindergarten through 12th grade. That may all change with a title adjustment proposed by the Kentucky Board of Interpreters that will remove the EIPA as a way to become certified as an educational interpreter.
Jessica Meek’s daughter, Emma, relies on an interpreter at school. Meek said it took about two years for her daughter to develop a bond with her interpreter and keep up with school. Meek said it’s made a big difference. “She has made so much progress.”
Meek is worried that if this new rule moves forward, Emma’s interpreter would be pulled from the school until she became compliant with the new regulations, meaning that Emma could fall behind.
“If she goes any time without an interpreter, that’s a problem,” Meek said. “She’s not going to learn, not going to keep up. Her language progression will regress. Even if they do get a new interpreter, the time it’s going to take for her to build that trust and that relationship is going to take time, and I don’t want her to get left behind.”
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Federal Civil Rights Trial Begins in Six Flags ASL Interpreter Case
Courtroom News Service (09/24/24) By Alan Riquelmy
Melvin Patterson is suing Six Flags Theme Parks, Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, and Park Management Corp. in federal court over what he said are violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act. Patterson, who is deaf, said a representative of the Six Flags park in Vallejo, California, denied him an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter in 2021, at one point telling him the park didn’t provide that service.
Patterson, through an ASL interpreter, testified that he bought five gold passes to the Six Flags park in June 2021 as a birthday gift for one of his daughters. He and his wife had visited the park some 10 years before and had interpreters provided to them. “In 2021, I thought it was going to be the same experience,” Patterson said. “But it wasn’t. Not that year.”
After buying the passes, Patterson tried to contact the park to request an ASL interpreter. However, he had to leave messages. Two days later, his family traveled to the park. His first stop was the guest relations office, where he was given a phone number he needed to contact. He and his wife, who is also deaf, had no interpreter that day. The family opted to focus on the rides instead of performances, which Patterson said didn’t provide them the full park experience.
“‘You can bring your own interpreter,’” attorney Reyna Lubin, representing Patterson, quoting what a customer service representative told Patterson. “‘We don’t provide services for interpreting.’” Lubin said that none of her client’s attempts to contact Six Flags mattered because the park never intended to provide an interpreter for him.
What followed were weeks of calls and emails to park representatives. At one point, Patterson tried to get a refund for the park passes but was instead directed to a website with information about the Americans with Disabilities Act. Patterson said the site had no information about ASL services. “I asked why an interpreter wasn’t provided for me and they hung up on me,” he said.
Attorney Rudie Baldwin, representing Six Flags, said the evidence will show Patterson’s case was merely a bad customer service experience, not a violation of civil rights laws. Baldwin indicated that an employee telling Patterson that the park didn’t provide sign language interpreting services was an error. That employee thought Patterson needed a personal care attendant and didn’t realize that the park also offered ASL interpreters. “It’s not a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Unruh Act,” Balwin said.
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2024 National Book Awards Longlist for Translated Literature Announced
National Book Foundation (09/11/24)
The National Book Foundation has announced the Longlist for the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The finalists in all five categories will be revealed October 1st in The New York Times. Winners will be announced live at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on November 20th.
Publishers submitted a total of 141 books for the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The judges for Translated Literature are Aron Aji, Jennifer Croft, Jhumpa Lahiri (chair), Gary Lovely, and Julia Sanches.
The 10 titles on this year’s Translated Literature Longlist were originally published in six languages: Arabic, Danish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Swedish. Four of the honorees have previously been recognized as longlisters or finalists for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.
Leri Price and Samar Yazbek were finalists in 2021 for Planet of Clay, and, for her translations, Price was longlisted in 2023 for No One Prayed Over Their Graves and a finalist in 2019 for Death Is Hard Work, both written by Khaled Khalifa. Sophie Hughes was longlisted for her translations in 2020 for Hurricane Season and in 2023 for This Is Not Miami, both written by Fernanda Melchor. Heather Cleary was longlisted in 2018 for her translation of Comemadre by Roque Larraquy. The authors and translators on the list have been recognized by numerous international prizes, including the English PEN Translates Awards, the International Booker Prize, the PEN Translation Prize, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, among others.
2024 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:
Nasser Abu Srour for The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom
Translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren (Other Press)
Bothayna Al-Essa for The Book Censor’s Library
Translated from Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless Books)
Linnea Axelsson for Ædnan
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel (Knopf/Penguin Random House)
Solvej Balle for On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)
Translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (New Directions Publishing)
Layla Martínez for Woodworm
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott (Two Lines Press)
Fiston Mwanza Mujila for The Villain’s Dance
Translated from French by Roland Glasser (Deep Vellum/Deep Vellum Publishing)
Fernanda Trías for Pink Slime
Translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary (Scribner/Simon & Schuster)
Fernando Vallejo for The Abyss
Translated from Spanish by Yvette Siegert (New Directions Publishing)
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ for Taiwan Travelogue
Translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf Press)
Samar Yazbek for Where the Wind Calls Home
Translated from Arabic by Leri Price (World Editions)
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