In accordance with Assembly Bill (AB) 635 (Atkins, Chapter 600, Statutes of 2016) which was passed with little objection, and Senate Bill (SB) 165 (Atkins, Chapter 365, Statutes of 2019) which passed unanimously:

On August 31, 2021, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) announced that Medi-Cal beneficiaries will be receiving increased interpreter support in several regions in California, including Contra Costa County. The aim of this was to ensure that all patients, no matter what language they speak, are able to receive the care that they deserve without having to worry about communication.

The project is called Medical Interpretation Pilot Project. Through the legislatively mandated project, medical interpreters in the following languages are needed or will be called upon. This is to cover Medi-Cal assignments in the area either on-site or remotely, either via phone or video conferencing.

Arabic
Armenian
Cambodian
Cantonese
Dari
Farsi
Hindi
Hmong
Japanese
Korean
Laotian
Mam
Mandarin
Mien
Mixteco
Pashto
Punjabi
Russian
Spanish
Tagalog
Thai
Vietnamese

Monterey Language Services is proud to be part of the MIPP team, providing interpretation services in Richmond/Antioch area.

Through accurate and clear translation of corporate communication materials, customers and employees can gain a better understanding of the corporate message and guidelines and can thus better contribute to the greater success of the corporation.

Global companies working with Monterey Language Services are growing stronger because they have chosen a translation and interpretation company that gives individualized attention to each translation project entrusted to them.

Our company stands firmly by what we believe in and provides the following to our global corporate customers.

Specialty: Translation and interpretation that require high level of expertise

Domains: Medical, legal, technical, and business subjects

Approach: Clear, accurate, and complete translation and interpretation

Value: Professional, efficient, and high quality services

Languages provided: Over 175 languages (including Arabic, Japanese, Hebrew, Malay, German, French, Indonesian, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Italian, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Hindi Norwegian, Polish, Russian and more)

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

Our interpreters are professionally qualified. They have studied translation and interpretation at the graduate or undergraduate level, or are professionally certified, or have received training in medical, legal and technical subject areas. They are experienced medical interpreters, legal interpreters and technical interpreters. Furthermore, they pursue continuing on-the-job training and education.

Our interpreters are not only local, able to come to our headquarters or to our client sites to perform services, but also distant, working remotely through a range of technology options such as video remote.

Our interpreters work consecutively, but also at conference, offering simultaneous interpretation.

Monterey Language Services has been providing language support to hospitals for years. A short list includes Spanish, ASL, Vietnamese, Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Punjabi, Gujarati, and indigenous languages such as Triqui, Mixteco, Zapotec. Even when a rare language is needed, we can vet and bring interpreters to our customers in a matter of hours.

We stand by ready 24-7, either work with a regular schedule of interpreting appointments, or provide last minute on-demand interpretation, for example for a hospital’s emergency needs.

It is our goal at Monterey Language Services to provide a full line of interpretation services. And it is to that end that we maintain our huge pool of professional interpreters to serve you whenever or wherever you need them.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

In this blog post we interviewed one of our Arabic colleagues, Laith Ibrahim.  

Monterey Language Services (referred to as “M”): Thank you for participating in this interview. Can you briefly introduce Arabic to us?

Laith (referred to as “L”): Arabic is one of the Middle Eastern languages, which also include Dari, Urdu, Farsi, Pashto and Kurdish. These languages all use Arabic letters but depending on the language, each one may have additional letters or extra sounds. I am originally from Iraq. Before settling in the U.S. I have worked in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, where I used a mix of standard Arabic and the local and Iraqi dialect.

M: I’ve heard that in Arabic the term “lion” can have hundreds of names. That sounds very interesting? How is it possible?

L: There are in fact at least 500 names for the word “lion.” The word “sword” is another example. It has around 300 different names that are given based on the characteristics of the sword like shape, size, thickness, weight, etc. 

M: Can you share more differences between Arabic and English?

L: There are many differences, for instance:

• Arabic is written from right to left and in cursive format, with no distinctions between upper and lower case. Arabic has 28 letters and each has up to 4 shapes depending on its location: the beginning, middle, or end of the word. The shape of a letter is also affected by the predecessor and successor.

• Arabic has no vowel letters. Instead, it uses small characters that are written above or below the letter to change the sound of the letter. These are called diacritics (in Arabic, “Harakat”) indicate sounds not represented by the basic alphabet. Arabic text is usually written without them unless a word can be read in a different way if they are not used.

• Arabic has letters that produce sounds that don’t exist in English. Also, the sound for P, CH, V, X don’t exist in Arabic.

• Most words have one form and are written in one way. For example, my name “ليث” has only one way of writing it in Arabic. In English it can be written as “Laith” or “Layth.”

M: Thank you for sharing! One last question, what does your name “Laith” mean in Arabic?

L: (Laughs) “Laith” is actually “lion” in Arabic. It’s a bold, strong lion.

Since its creation, Twitter has been a worldwide phenomenon that has connected everyday people with their favorite celebrities, friends, and everyone in between.  Although the service has been provided worldwide, the company has been trying to translate the business tools into 33 languages in order to reach an even broader audience.

These languages include: Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Urdu.

At the Twitter Translation Center, translators can sign on using their Twitter account and help translate various blocks of text for the company. The upside for the translator is experience in the field, as well as their name possibly on the “Top Ten Translators” for those who have been translating the most.

The @MRYLanguages Twitter account isn’t in this top ten just yet, but it does connect directly with Director of Translation Mei-Ling Chen where she will gladly answer questions posed about the company, translation services, or any other related topic in the industry.

Why is it important that a translation service is located in Monterey Bay? Well, some of the finest language institutes are located in Monterey. The Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) and the Defense Language Institute (DLI) are specialized institutions. The DLI also does research in the Language field and provides linguistic and cultural instruction for the Department of Defense. MIIS provides 15 different fields of study within the umbrella of Language studies. Some of these include Social Change, Terrorism Studies, Environment, Business Studies, and Translation.

Along with these schools, California State University at Monterey Bay (CSUMB) has many students graduating with a degree in Japanese or Spanish. CSUMB also provides classes in American Sign Language (ASL) and introduces students to the deaf culture. Many of the students who graduate with these majors have also studied abroad and have been immersed in the culture with which they study. The same kind of culture can be found at MIIS and the DLI.

Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) also provides language classes that include ASL, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. This concentration of high quality language instruction in the area calls for the inclusion of a high quality translation service.  ~ By Sam Pereira

Monterey Language Services is happy to call this place “home”.

We had a large interpretation event for a group coming from all over Latin America.  This brings up interest in the discussion about the varieties of Spanish.

Is a pato a duck?  Or is it a Puerto Rican derogatory term for a gay man?  Or is it a bedpan?  In Puebla, Mexico, the word is used to mean bedpan, while in the Baja Peninsula, silleta means bedpan.  No matter how you use any of these words, they give you a glimpse into the diversity that is the Spanish language. 

Spanish is the native language of over 300 million people worldwide, making it the second-most widely spoken language in the world.  It is the official language of twenty-one countries, and practically each one has its own version of the language.

There is US Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Caribbean Spanish, and European Spanish.  European Spanish is the most basic form of the language.  Caribbean, Mexican and Latin American Spanish are essentially mixtures of the original language with indigenous words, and people often drop final S and intervocalic D in some of the countries.  US Spanish is more influenced by US English, and has led to informal versions of Spanish like Spanglish and Tex-Mex.

Spanish is of course a Romance Language, meaning that it is based in Latin.  Still, it has acquired words from other language groups.  Arabic gave the language aceite (oil) and Frankish gave the language guante (glove).  Numerous words of course entered the language from American Indian languages: huarache (slipper) and aguacate (avocado) are examples.  More recently, English has contributed words like modem and Internet to Spanish.

It should come as no surprise that certain letters have different pronunciations in different countries.  In Spain, LL is pronounced as L followed by Y; in Mexico it is simply pronounced as Y, and in Argentina it is pronounced ZH.  Another example is the letters Z and C: Z and C preceding E or I are lisped in Spain; in other countries Z and C preceding E and I are pronounced like S (in Spanish, this is called seseo).  Andalusian explorers influenced the Latin American pronunciations of the language.

Spanish, like other languages, has changed over the centuries, especially as it has travelled around the world.  One of the most significant changes that the language has undergone can be seen in the use of the second-person plural.  For second-person plural familiar, Spain has the word vosotros, meaning “you all”.  However, outside of Spain, this conjugation only appears in common speech in Argentina, Chile, Equatorial Guinea and the Philippines.  In most of the Hispanophone world, people use ustedes for second person plural, both for familiar and formal, while vosotros sometimes appears in older writings.

This begs the question: why do certain words have different meanings in different countries?  It is possible that the specific mixture of people in a given region creates a new interpretation of a word.  As a result, what is a neutral-sounding word in one country might be an impolite word in another country.  But even without an answer, that topic is another indicator of the richness of language, and should give anyone a strong appreciation of language.