Standardized Testing

ASL interpreters are often present in the classroom as educational interpreters. Similarly, interpretation is needed for providing instructions for standardized testing, such as the SATs in American schools. Sometimes the same educational interpreters can be called upon to interpret for standardized testing in their respective schools, but this might not be a certainty. The test may take place on a weekend and require a different interpreter to fill in, for example.

Standardized tests also don’t necessarily take place in a K-12 environment. For example, these tests might be taken to certify a job requirement or receive a passing grade to enter a special program.

American Sign Language and Foreign Sign Language

When we were asked to provide an interpreter for a patient who required Mexican Sign Language (LSM), we were able to send a Certified Deaf Interpreter (CDI) who was familiar with both ASL and LSM. CDIs themselves are Deaf or hard-of-hearing and are native in sign language and Deaf culture.

The CDI assigned to this task was exceptional at interpreting between ASL and LSM. However, due to the fact that the CDI could not vocalize the client’s needs to the hospital staff, a second interpreter — this one for ASL — was brought in to interpret between the CDI and the staff. Thus, the communication flow looked like this:

Patient > CDI > ASL Interpreter > Hospital Staff, and vice versa.

The interpretation was successful in large part thanks to the hospital interpreter manager who was able to inform us ahead of time that they would require LSM, which gave us the time to comb through our large network of interpreters and send a right fit. The ability to identify a proper language is a very important prerequisite for a successful and smooth interpretation encounter. The hospital was our county’s public hospital Natividad Medical Center. Their excellent caregiving to the patient and hospitality to our interpreters were highly commendable. We appreciate all the hard work involved on all sides and are honored to share such an excellent work between foreign sign language and American sign language interpretation.

In today’s blog, we’ll be highlighting a few tips about how to track trends by collecting/analyzing data and using it to the LSP’s advantage.

Try out surveys.

Surveys are a very easy way to get qualitative data, which can help LSPs understand the quality of the service provided. Usually, surveys are sent out to clients after they’ve received their service. Clients can rate their satisfaction with the service they received on a scale such as from 1-10 or Poor to Excellent, and can leave more detailed information about what they liked and did not like about their service.

Challenges may occur if a client forgets to fill out some of the questions, misunderstands a question, or doesn’t fill out the survey at all. This is why translating the survey and providing the client’s preferred language is very important, so they can understand everything and can answer all the questions properly!

For example, Monterey Language Services has often been requested to provide translation for surveys, whether to support research projects or international companies whose employees span all over the world. Most recently, we translated a survey into 11 languages: Arabic, Armenian, Cambodian, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Mien, Spanish, and Tagalog. We also have done survey interviews to make sure employees understand their company’s core value.

Use transactional data.

You can collect data from your own company’s transactional data to collect quantitative data, which can help LSPs identify how many times they provided service for different languages and for which clients. Transactional data refers to your sales, receipts, POs, invoices, etc. that tell you when, where, how, and for what language you’re providing services for.

By looking at your transactional data, you can identify trends. For example, if there are more requests from a nearby hospital, you can deduce if you need to hire more medical interpreters. Similarly, you can look at trends in language requests, such as if there’s a sudden surge in Korean requests; perhaps there has been an influx of people moving to the area, or there’s some sort of event going on that you should investigate.

Keep up-to-date and do research.

Other important topics to keep an eye on in the language services industry are things like technology and common issues. Technology is essential in today’s world, especially for large translation projects or simultaneous interpretation assignments.

Technology and common issues or topics of conversation constantly change and evolve. Make sure to keep up-to-date, and research through news articles and even social media such as LinkedIn to see what people are talking about. Joining professional organizations is also helpful so be on the lookout for those as well.