Some Sound advice for the construction industry

The New Language of Construction Safety

From electrical wiring and scaffolding to a wide variety of lethal chemicals, hazards are common on construction job sites. Are workers with limited English proficiency another danger on today’s multicultural construction projects?

In America, predictions are that Hispanics will comprise more than 50% of the construction workforce within the next five years. In the UK there is a growing percentage of migrant workers within the UK construction industry. The accident and fatality rate for Hispanics in construction in the US is already much higher than it is for either African-Americans or Caucasians. What’s the reason for this disparity?

The answers are both cultural and linguistic. The workplace in Latin America is a hierarchy with a well-defined chain of command. Workers go up the ladder with ideas or suggestions to their immediate supervisor. To many Latinos, a “good” employee trusts his supervisor implicitly- without questions. Asking questions can be seen as a threat to the supervisor’s authority instead of a desire for clarification.

The cultural barrier to communications is just as serious as the language barrier where safety is concerned. Even though many Hispanic workers are learning English, for many it is a Herculean task. For average Hispanic adults, the learning curve to speaking English fluently can take up to seven years and sometimes longer.Consequently, implementing training policies that are spoken and/or printed in English only will be ineffective and potentially dangerous.

There are many questions concerning how to deal with the potential dangers associated with non-English speaking workers in the construction industry. There’s no doubt that job sites will always pose some risks, however employers bear the ultimate responsibility for making the workplace as safe as possible.

Cultural diversity and Spanish language training for supervisory personnel will continue to provide some of the answers to this complex 21st century construction issue within the US. A change in awareness may provide others. The situation is similar in the UK but across a more diverse set of European (predominantly) languages.

Think about the ways you can create a new language of safety on your job site. When translators are not available, speak slowly, be direct using short simple sentences, and when possible use demonstrations. Show specific safety techniques and have all employees practice them. This practical training and facilitated communication is an important aspect of the new language of safety.

How to Break the Language Barrier

1. Speak slowly. Non-native English speakers need extra time to process what you are saying. Translating from one language into another isn’t automatic.
2. Be direct. Use short, simple sentences, especially when giving instructions. People learning English get lost in long sentences with complicated grammar.
3. Use a normal speaking voice. Don’t speak in a loud voice. Your employee doesn’t have trouble hearing you. They have trouble understanding you.
4. Use bilingual employees wisely. They are one of your company’s biggest assets. Group non-English speaking employees with bilingual ones. If possible, group people from the same countries together. Their language and accents will be the same.
5. Colour. Identify bilingual employees with a brightly coloured hard hat. When seconds count in an emergency they can be found quickly.

LangCommLive provides an on demand telephone interpreting service which could be invaluable in a training environment or in the event of an emergency. Despite the economic downturn, particularly in construction, the date of one sporting event is fixed for the Summer of 2012. There's a lot of construction work required before the Olympics can commence.

To open an account with LangCommLive and overcome the language barrier, contact us at +44 (0)845 055 9756 or enquiries@langcommlive.com

Visit www.langcommlive.com

Doing business in Italy or Russia and other Russian speaking countries?

Italian is mainly spoken in Italy, with 58 million native speakers. Italy is an industrialized nation with ready access to internet services. Italy is also a major player in the EU as well as world politics and larger area economies with a significant consumer buying power.

Russian: At least 167 million people speak Russian as their mother tongue. Russian is an official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It is widely understood in the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaidjan, Turkmenistan, Moldavia and Tadjikistan.
Outside former soviet countries, Russian is the mother tongue of more than 750,000 people in Israel, where you can find Russian-language newspapers and TV channels.

Besides the written word you will enhance the likelihood of business success by embracing the languages and cultures of Italy or Russia. For the language, Telephone Interpreting is probably the simplest course of action: Dial LangCommLive on +44 (0)844 555 5224, enter your account number* and enter the appropriate number to bring in either an Italian or a Russian interpreter. On average it will take 22 seconds for the interpreter to come on line.

*To open an account with LangCommLive and overcome the language barrier, contact us at +44 (0)845 055 9756 or enquiries@langcommlive.com

Alternatively visit www.langcommlive.com

LangCommLive exhibit at Call Centre Expo 2008

LangCommLive took part in its 3rd exhibition this year to promote its telephone interpreting service. The Call Centre Expo was by far our most successful show to date with interest shown from organisations from within the public and private sectors, both in the UK and off-shore. Small in house call centres and help desks, large outsourced call centres and BPO seemed genuinely interested in our service. It was clear that most organisations either have some of their own resource to help them overcome some of the language issues or acknowledged that this was a gap in their own service offering.

Take a look at some pictures of our stand, featuring Gail Clothier and Jannet Tebb, LangCommLive Regional Account Managers, and Andrew Rowley, UK Sales Director.

If you want to learn more on how accessing LangCommLive's telephone interpreting service can help your call centre overcome the language barrier, please contact us on 0845 055 9756, visit our website http://www.langcommlive.com/ or write to us at enquiries@langcommlive.com

Four!

Here's a quick current-events quiz for American golf fans:
Question: When people turn out for the LPGA tour, they are most interested in:
A) Viewing the athletic prowess of the best women golfers in the world.
B) Hearing them speak good English.
If you're confused by the question - and the choice of answers - then you've passed the test. That's exactly how intelligent people ought to respond to the LPGA's requirement that international players not just speak some English, but be English-proficient by 2009 or be suspended. It's befuddling that the Ladies Professional Golf Association would choose to alienate some of the world's best players for the sake of proper English discourse.
This kind of requirement might have been acceptable in the days of American sports of yore, when there were mostly homegrown players on the field and the few female players were subjected to much more personal scrutiny than the men.
These days, sports organizations, from baseball to soccer, are more concerned with how athletes excel in their particular sports than with their looks, their culture or their language skills.
As they must be. To put together winning teams, U.S. sports organizations are now regularly recruiting players from all over the world. Indeed, there are 121 international players on the LPGA tour. When you're a multinational organization of that scope, you've got to expect some language diversity.
So what gives? LPGA officials' reasoning for why they are treading where no other sports league has, including the PGA, is thin, not to mention patronizing.
"In order for them and the LPGA to be most successful, players must be able to effectively communicate with fans, sponsors and media, the vast majority of whom speak English," LPGA Commissioner Carolyn F. Bivens said in defense of the new rule, which caused an instant uproar. Funny, the sports world hasn't seemed at all concerned about players' use of translators or language barriers before.
But the LPGA sees itself apart from other sports. "Unlike athletes in other sports, LPGA players must entertain and engage sponsors and their customers on a weekly basis." Is she talking abut professional athletes or strippers here? It's hard to tell. (In any case, the controversy surrounding the new rule has at least one sponsor, State Farm, reconsidering its sponsorship.)
As for charges that this is an English-only rule, Bivens explained that English would be required in three instances: during pro-ams, winner acceptance speeches and media interviews. Players could speak to their caddies, for example, in whatever tongue they like.
Not surprisingly, the LPGA's patronizing tone with this language requirement has caused some uproar from groups representing Asian-Americans and women, such as the Asian American Justice Center and the California National Organization for Women.
The rule seems to have been targeting some of the 45 players from South Korea who have varying English skills and are camera-shy to boot.
But it also targets women athletes, and that is what has so many people upset. No other professional sports league has any similar requirement, though many do have international players with varying degrees of English proficiency.
California state Sen. Leland Yee condemned the action.
This rule reflects poorly on the LPGA, which should rescind it immediately. In this day and age, it's not acceptable to hold women athletes to a different standard than men, and certainly not when it comes to behavior when the games are over.
It would be nice if all the players were able to rattle off in clear English their hopes, their dreams, their strategies and competitors. But it does no service to anyone - the players, the tour, the media, the fans or even those important sponsors - to make decisions about players based on something other than their skill on the green.
There clearly is a language barrier on the LPGA tour, and it has nothing to do with the players.

I'm not sure whether Telephone Interpreting is really the solution to the above impasse, but for most other communication difficulties contact LangCommLive.
www.langcommlive.com
enquiries@langcommlive.com

British banks set sights on ‘Polish pound’

Here's an interesting piece from the FT from last April 2007.

Britain’s banks are fighting an intensifying battle to capture a slice of the “Polish pound” – the disposable income of the more than 600,000 immigrants from Poland living in the UK.
The “Polish pound” – which a new calculation by the Centre for Economics and Business Research values at more than £4bn a year – offers a rapidly growing and largely untapped market for businesses in a wide range of sectors. With many Poles looking to send money to family or personal accounts back home, banks and financial services companies are at the forefront of the drive to win their custom.
On Wednesday sees the latest bid for their business when Lloyds TSB unveils a current account specifically tailored to new immigrant workers, including a radical money transfer card. It reflects the bank’s belief that offering simpler and cheaper international remittances is the best way to enhance its appeal to central European immigrants.
It has designed the service after 125,000 current accounts were opened with Lloyds TSB by Polish customers last year alone. Poles now make up the bank’s largest foreign national group.
The new Silver account, which has been coupled with a significant recruitment drive for Polish-speaking branch staff and a more accessible credit card, is designed to respond to competitors such as HSBC and Barclays who have also identified the Polish community as a strategic target.
HSBC last year launched its Passport account, which can be opened before a migrant arrives in the UK and offers discounted money transmission services.
Lloyds TSB has responded with its new account offering annual European travel insurance, which has been unavailable to recent arrivals, and a new card similar to a second debit card which can be pre-loaded with cash, sent to family members for use in their home country and topped up by telephone. The bank had found that many Polish customers were sending their debit cards home to family and friends, leaving themselves without a cash card in the UK.
Financial institutions are not alone in spotting an opportunity. Mainstream retailers are increasingly catering to Polish tastes. Tesco says Polish food is the fastest-growing minority range ever launched, while Heinz has introduced Pudliszki, its brand of Polish prepared foods, to British supermarkets.

Without doubt, therefore, telephone interpreting would assist UK Financial Institutions to reach out to all nationalities - not just Polish - around the UK. It is clearly impractical to be able to accommodate the full range of languages spoken across the UK via recruitment alone. Equally, the revenues available from the collective migrant population must be truly vast if the Polish opportunity is in the region of £4bn

To discuss any matter pertaining to languages or to open an account with LangCommLive and overcome the language barrier, contact us at +44 (0)845 055 9756 or write to us at enquiries@langcommlive.com

Visit www.langcommlive.com

Overcoming barriers - BAPCO Journal July 2008

A year ago an article published by the Daily Mail highlighted how police forces in the UK were spending record amounts on foreign language interpreters, and how those levels of spending could have repercussions on frontline policing resources. However, could clever use of technology have a substantial impact on these costs?
The Daily Mail held that in a 12-month period, £25 million had been spent in England and Wales on translators alone, an increase of £4 million from the previous year. Gloucestershire Chief Constable Tim Brain was quoted as saying that forces were using their contingency reserves to pay for these bills. “Once they’ve spent out, there will have to be cutbacks and, in a service where over 80 per cent of our costs are staff, that inevitably will mean fewer police officers or staff.”It is no surprise, then, that technology solutions that could make an impact on these translation bills are now much sought after.First ContactOne such solution is First Contact by Lattice, a new company that exhibited at the BAPCO exhibition this year. As previously highlighted in this magazine, First Contact is a suite of software that can be used by call operators; front desk staff with touch screens; and officers on the street equipped with mobile data devices.The system integrates with telephone, computing, Internet and mobile technologies, and works as a system of multilingual, pre-configured dialogues. A police operator using First Contact can identify the language of a caller in a matter of seconds. The system enables the operator to ascertain the key facts of a given situation (e.g. a traffic accident, the number of cars involved, casualties etc) in order to deploy the suitable resources.At the front desk of a police station, First Contact allows an officer and a visitor to communicate via touch screens. Once a language is established, the officer can establish the reason for the visit – eg to report an assault – and also collect details such as description of the attacker and time/location of the incident. The system is being used by Northamptonshire Police in the mobile control room for this year’s F1 meeting at Silverstone.Officers on the street can deploy First Contact via their PDAs, and – for example – ask a Chinese motorist in their own language if they have drunk alcohol in the last 20 minutes. The officer can then go on to explain that he is authorised by law to ask the motorist to take a breathalyser test, in Chinese, and talk the motorist through the use of the device.Lattice Director Bob Carnell has seen much interest in First Contact since exhibiting at Bapco, especially from the larger forces. “One large force said that it could save half of its interpreters bill by using it. Every day they have interpreters called to police stations, and these professionals are often paid by the day, but often are only used for 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there. In many cases the officers know what the questions are going to be in advance, and with First Contact they could get that information straightaway. And in some cases they may not have to use an interpreter at all.”Carnell also highlights how First Contact could be used in the context of emergency call handlers. “When people who don’t speak English call the police, there is a time lag while the call handler tries to identify the language and engages an interpreter, so that a meaningful conversation can take place. In this scenario First Contact would enable the call handler and caller to engage straightaway instead of having to wait. And it is a lot less costly.”For the last three months call handlers at a major UK Police Force have been working with Lattice developing the different scripts necessary for the different scenarios, with and many police forces have subsequently been impressed with the development of the system.According to Carnell, interest in First Contact is increasing due to continued efforts by police forces to engage with ethnic communities that don’t speak English very well. Considering that this is a nation-wide issue that is not confined to one area of the UK, there could be scope for a unified approach along the lines championed in Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s recent report. Time will tell and while it is too soon for Carnell to be more specific, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies has already expressed an interest to offer First Contact to all lines of business, in the UK and around the world. “In the police sector, it makes no sense to reinvent the wheel for each force, so we are talking about making the core system available to any force who wants to use it, tailored to their local needs. All they would do is to obtain the relevant access codes, from which point the call handlers could then use the software.”“Once deployed in this way with the UK police forces, then it could easily be expanded to the other emergency services, the MOD, local authorities and beyond that into the commercial sectors such as utilities, hotels and airlines.”Human interaction and technologyWhile scripted language technology such as Lattice’s certainly has huge potential, it does have limitations. How would a police officer on the street use First Contact, for example, when dealing with a lost child that cannot speak any English? It is here, in situations requiring specific answers, that “on demand” telephone interpreting services come into their own.Andrew Rowley, UK Sales Director of LangCommLive (part of the Transatlantic Translations Group), believes that telephone interpreting services – which offer immediacy – is a sector that will continue to grow as immigration into the UK continues apace. In practice the system works as follows: each police officer is issued with a credit-sized reference card with a code and a number. Once a language is established, the officer can call an interpreter – often based in the native language country – who is part of a pool of such interpreters available 24/7. The company has a pool of around 1,600 interpreters, all from professional backgrounds and with at least three years’ interpreting experience. They are all thoroughly vetted and trained, and all also sign a non-disclosure agreement.
As for costs, LangCommLive charges by the 100th of a second, which Rowley is quick to point out is not the industry standard, where to the nearest minute is closer to the norm. Bills are all itemised in a similar style to a standard telephone bill.“There are great advantages to telephone interpreting over face-to-face interpreting where you have to bring someone in and usually pay by the hour. Our rates are competitive and the charges don’t start until the interpreter has answered the call – and it doesn’t matter which language you call.” Rowley suggests a high quality interpreting service at an aggressive price per minute, providing cost per minute savings for the public sector is realistic – invaluable because of the cost pressures on public sector spending. “In sensitive situations I cannot say that the interpreter would not find the content of a conversation or interview disturbing, and if an interpreter was required for something quite unpleasant then we would suggest the services were booked in advance, so the interpreter could be briefed first.” Rowley has only recently started approaching the blue lights with LangCommLive, and has been surprised by the reaction. “Most people have never heard of such a service, or the fact you can dial into 156 different languages. We are happy for people to trial the service for a couple of months to gauge the benefits.”

Contact LangCommLive at enquiries@langcommlive.com
Visit www.langcommlive.com
Tel 0845 055 9756

Considering supplying to or buying from Germany?

There are approximately 75 million German speakers in Germany, 7 million in Austria, 260,000 in Luxembourg, 3,400,000 in Switzerland, and about 1,500,000 in Alsace-Lorraine. There are many German speakers in Eastern Europe but the subject is quite sensitive and no statistics are available. The total number of speakers is said to be 120 millions.

Germany remains one of the strongest and most stable economies within the EU and World stage. With consumer buying power in the billions of dollars, reaching out to this industrious market can result in significant growth potential.

Besides the written word you will enhance the likelihood of business success by embracing the language and culture of Germany. For the language, Telephone Interpreting is probably the simplest course of action: Dial LangCommLive on +44 (0)844 555 5224, enter your account number* and enter "4" to bring in a German interpreter. On average it will take 22 seconds for the German interpreter to come on line.*To open an account with LangCommLive and overcome the language barrier, contact us at +44 (0)845 055 9756 or write to us at enquiries@langcommlive.com

Visit www.langcommlive.com