It’s an unfortunate fact that many people have false ideas about language. For example, hearing a non-standard dialect of English—such as African American Vernacular English or Appalachian English—might cause someone to think the speaker to be not well-educated, when in actuality, linguistic choices don’t necessarily reflect the intelligence of the speaker. A separate “dialect,” also called a “variety,” of a language can create cohesiveness in a smaller group among speakers and allow members to feel more at ease.

A so-called “language” tends to be the “ideal” way to talk by the most powerful group among a larger whole, whether in one country, several countries, etc. For example, when our colleague, Olivia, studied Japanese in college, she was taught the Tokyo dialect, because that’s where the current capital of Japan is, as well as its center of its business and trade. When she lived in a homestay in Nagoya, a major city to the west of Tokyo, she was surprised when some people would conjugate verbs differently or use sentence endings she’d never heard of.

An “accent” can sometimes be used interchangeably with “dialect/variety”; however, this isn’t quite the case. “Accent” refers to how a person pronounces words (think a New Yorker saying “I’m walkin’ here!”), while “dialect” or “variety” refers not just to pronunciation, but also grammar and vocabulary (like “I gone down to the meeting, but wasn’t nobody there” or “bald” for a treeless mountain in Appalachian English).

In the article mentioned above, the individual said he spoke “pidgin” English. A “pidgin” is a form of language that arises when two or more groups who do not have a language in common must speak together, and create simplified, rather limited vocabulary and grammar structures. Linguists tend to consider pidgins as incomplete languages, as they do not generally have a fully structured grammar. A pidgin may form into a “creole” when fully developed vocabulary and grammar develop from children who learn to use the pidgin as their native language. An example of a pidgin sentence is: “Dem neva cam?” for “They haven’t come yet?”

The world of linguistics goes even farther and deeper than just these examples, and are just some of the things we need to think about as language service providers. An interpreter might need to study up on a dialect before helping a client, or a separate person might need to be found altogether if the interpreter knows nothing of the specific language variety.

As a language service provider, we think of these different scenarios, cases, and variations all the time. It’s our responsibility to provide our clients with quality service, and getting to the heart of linguistic differences is just one aspect of that.

That article reminds us of a recent situation we encountered. We had a client seeking asylum in a somewhat remote location in the United States who requested Triqui interpretation. We were about to provide a Triqui interpreter over the phone for telephonic interpretation, given that in-person interpretation in such a remote location was not really possible for the client. However, at the last minute, the asylum office decided that they did not allow telephonic interpretation. There could be any number of reasons for the telephonic interpretation cancellation. Yet, these incidents have got us thinking. What rights do non-citizens have in the United States, especially in regards to translation and interpretation?

According to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, any program that receives Federal funds or financial assistance cannot discriminate based on race, color, or national origin of a person; this also means that these programs must provide access to people with limited English proficiency. Read more about Title VI here and more about Title VI and LEP services here.

However, Title VI does not provide an all-encompassing solution. Service providers are only required to take “reasonable steps” to give access to their programs to LEP individuals. Whatever the case, non-citizens do have the right to request language assistance from Federally-funded institutions. Non-citizen’s rights to have access to translation and interpretation is a basic human need for communication. We at Monterey Language Services are all for supporting the human rights that non-citizens deserve to have in whatever format that interpretation would be conducted, be it in-person, by phone, or over video.

This blog post is our first attempt to look into non-citizen rights to translators and interpreters, so stay tuned for more to come!