About five buttons and five minutes later, my grandfather reached an interpreter, not a bank employee, who mediated between him and the bank. His question was “how can I receive a credit card through Union Bank?” and the answer was less than helpful.
By Margarita Hirapetian
LALA Reporter
Phone conversations are intimidating in a foreign language: eyebrow gymnastics, hand gestures, and little sisters can’t help. Figuring out where to open a bank account or just making a dental appointment over the phone can be tough for immigrants with limited English.
As a response, AT&T has teamed up with a Monterey, Calif.–based company called Language Line Services to create “Your World. Your Language,” a free phone interpretation service that links limited English speakers with banks, department stores, public transit, and other businesses and services. Language Line Services provides flesh-and-blood translators and “patent-pending” technology, and AT&T routes the calls.
Initially launched last October in San Francisco, the service is now available in much of Southern California in Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog (Filipino), and Vietnamese. According to a Language Line Services news release, our whole nation of immigrants will have access to it by the end of 2008, in the selected languages.
At LALA, we were glad to hear about the service, and skeptical. To test it, I volunteered my grandfather, who grew up in the former Soviet Union. In addition, UCLA student Roger Wang reviewed the service in Mandarin, and LALA reporter Stephanie Tavitian tested it in Spanish.
The Senior Citizen Test
I realized that I needed my grandfather along for the fun after calling the toll-free number (888-855-0811) and then pressing buttons for a while before speaking with an actual person in Russian. My younger collaborators and I were used to telephone mazes, and we all speak fluent English. My papik has learned to say “please,” “thank you,” “hello,” and “goodbye” in English and was more than happy to help me out with my little “project.”
On his first attempt he pressed a wrong button and got nothing but silence on the other end. He called back and this time there was complete silence. After I stepped in and helped out a bit, he got the hang of the buttons. He followed the automated instructions and finally selected Union Bank of California to inquire about a credit card. For a Russian speaker, in fact, Union Bank was the only bank in all of “Your World. Your Language.”
About five buttons and five minutes later, my grandfather reached an interpreter, not a bank employee, who mediated between him and the bank. His question was “how can I receive a credit card through Union Bank?” and the answer was less than helpful. The interpreter told my grandfather to contact Citibank to ask for a credit card, but she wasn’t able to connect him with that bank or even to give him a phone number. She said that a Russian speaker at that bank would be able to assist him. All in all he wasn’t able to receive a straight answer. To sum it up my grandfather told me that he felt no need for the service and would probably never use it again.
From the Russian portion of the service alone, we could tell that a lot of things about it were upside-down or severely limited. Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Tiffany’s were the only store options, and smaller local businesses were not represented. The process seemed to serve member businesses first, and limited-English clients only as a necessary afterthought.
Later, I learned that there is a considerable difference among the options offered for each language. In Chinese, for example, two out of three services were banks, and there was no 1-800-DENTIST or Tiffany’s.
At the toll-free number, the first automated query after language was city. I could choose from Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. For L.A., I could find out about medical services (which meant 1-800-DENTIST), travel and transportation, banking and credit cards, and ordering a satellite dish.
It’s Saying They Do Thank You, and ‘Live Richly’
Calling in Mandarin Chinese, Roger had the best experience of the four reviewers. He initially chose San Francisco on the phone tree to inquire about opening a credit line. He was connected directly to a Citibank representative who spoke good Chinese. This time there was no interpreter in the middle.
However, when Roger called the L.A. line with the same request, he was connected to an interpreter, a very polite, older-sounding lady whose Chinese was less polished. Through the interpreter, an English-speaking Citibank representative said that, as much as he would like to help, he could discuss credit with the customer only. The representative offered to send information by mail and then connected Roger to an automated message, in English, that explained how to start a credit line. The interpreter stayed on the line, and soon the automated voice and her own began to overlap.
Despite all the confusion, Roger says, “I didn’t know this kind of thing existed, so I think I would recommend it, definitely.” Considering both phone calls, he added that the overall quality of interpretation on the service was high.
At another extreme, Stephanie’s experience was bewildering. Fully bilingual in Spanish and English, she could not make out the “monotone” automated options in Spanish and managed to select Los Angeles only with difficulty and on the second try. Still struggling to understand “the robotic voice,” she chose telephone and Internet services, then high-speed Internet. Predictably, that led to AT&T’s high-speed Internet service—and then she got cut off.
On a second call, Stephanie tried residential telephone services, was placed on hold for a couple of minutes, and was finally treated to a combination of muzak and a woman’s muffled voice. She thought the music might have come from somewhere else, maybe lines that crossed. Stephanie reports: “I screamed that I couldn’t hear, that the music was playing. She said to hold on, and that was it for about three minutes. Finally, I hung up with the muzak still playing.”
The entire ordeal yielded one frustrated reporter, another uninterested reporter, one indifferent senior citizen, and only one (sort of) happy customer. Though Roger’s experience seemed worthwhile, the rest of us will most likely save our thumbs for the remote control.
Originally Published 3/1/2007 at http://www.lalamag.ucla.edu/features/article.asp?parentid=64829
The Naskhulyans found it almost too easy to speak Armenian and Russian around Los Angeles, and struggled to communicate with their daughter.
Beverly Hills ballot, Beverly Hills Iranians
LA Language World: Outrage in the City
In Political Commentary on October 23, 2009 at 1:15 amTranslated ballots ought to have a unifying effect on the population.
By Margarita Hirapetian
LALA Reporter
When Beverly Hills City Clerk Byron Pope decided to publish the city’s absentee and sample election ballots in Persian and English for the March 6, 2007, elections he hardly thought he would be sparking outrage. Within a week Pope had fielded approximately 300 complaints from both Iranian- and American-born residents. No complaints were filed against a third language, Spanish, also present on the ballots.
Why were so many Beverly Hills residents offended by a decision that should have been viewed as a democratic service? Angelenos have become accustomed to seeing signs and directions translated into two or more languages on store fronts, in museums, and in airports. Most of Chinatown’s banners are in Chinese, and Echo Park billboards are almost exclusively in Spanish. In West Hollywood, ballots and informative pamphlets are printed in Russian.
Translation was not at the heart of the outrage in Beverly Hills. With Middle Easterners still experiencing a post-9/11 backlash and U.S.-Iranian relations worse than at any time since the 1980 Hostage Crisis, the display of Persian script on the ballot cover ignited political tensions. Meanwhile, some residents of Iranian descent were put off because the majority of them are perfectly comfortable in their knowledge of the English language, the older adults having learned English when they came to the States beginning in the 1970s. Professor Hossein Ziai, director of Iranian Studies at UCLA, says via email, “I think a lot of Iranian-Americans living in L.A. know English well enough to be able to make out a ballot written in English. I also believe that new immigrants should make serious efforts to learn English, the official and also the common language of our democracy.”
Although most Iranian immigrants to Los Angeles are confident with English, there is nothing wrong with translating ballots if it promotes voter participation and helps even a few people understand what they’re voting for. Translated ballots should have a unifying rather than divisive effect on the population. It’s a service that encourages citizens to be citizens. Adds Professor Ziai, “I believe that the state and government in democracies should do everything to encourage voter participation, and if translating ballots will help, then why not?”
As Ziai’s comments illustrate, two contrary yet all-American sensibilities are at work in the issue of ballot translation. Both teaching English and making voting easy and accessible to all citizens should be high government priorities. But where there’s a perceived conflict, ballot access must ultimately trump cultural assimilation. If translating ballots is one way to encourage voting, then I say translate early and translate often.
Originally Published 5/31/2007 at http://www.lalamag.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=70887