Moving on.

We now have our own blogging platform at http://blog.vocalink.net/blog/ so go and check it out. New authors and company news are now being published on a daily basis, so there's plenty to get into!

We will be moving our most relevant posts and pages from blogger to the new platform asap, so you will be able to go back to them there, although this blog right here will remain up for a while to allow a smooth transition.

Now go get yourself a subscription on our new home and if you have any questions let us know. We'll see you there!

Ricardo Torres. CCI, Class of 2011.

We would like to take this opportunity to recognize Ricardo Torres, our Manager of Interpreting Affairs, for being sworn in as one of Ohio's Certified Court Interpreters this week.

Ricardo is part of the Southwest Region of Ohio roster of Certified Spanish Interpreters, having completed his certification last year on the first class of certified interpreters. On January 19th he took part in a ceremony featuring Honorable Maureen O’Connor, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and Steven C. Hollon, Administrative Director of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Along with nine other interpreters, Ricardo was recognized for his dedication to the interpreting profession and commitment to language access in Ohio courts.

The Interpreter Services Program for the Supreme Court of Ohio continues to offer training and certification for interpreters in various languages including American Sign Language (ASL).

Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) - Not just for Hospitals!

Post by Lisa Stokesbury

General practitioners and other general healthcare professional are currently not using interpreters to bridge communication between themselves and non-English speaking patients due to the high cost, minimum fees and wait times that are applied. Normal and customary reimbursements from insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid have already reduced revenue to the point of not being able to cover overhead to treat a patient, along with the Title VI Civil Rights Act to provide an interpreter adds cost to the appointment making a physician lose money on the appointment. So therefore, these medical providers chose not to use a professional interpreting service, allowing staff, family or even choosing not to use an interpreter to get by only increasing the risk of inaccurate communication between the professional and patient. This option opens the door for misunderstandings of patient symptoms, physician instructions or medications, resulting in extended appointments or numerous return visits.

Many hospitals have been experiencing this for some time and have engaged in using Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) to improve efficiencies in delivering quality patient care. Current interpreting industry standards of minimum time/fee requirements associated with having an on-site interpreter, hospitals looked to VRI to reduce those times and fees. In client studies we determined an interpreter is only 40% efficient in various encounters within the facility. Meaning, for an hour long minimum interpreting appointment the interpreter is only actually used 40% of the time. This is also due in part to the actual time being required for patient communication due to wait times within the facility. With the use of VRI these hospitals now have computer access to an interpreter at a click of a button, allowing immediate access to the interpreter bridging communication with the patient increasing the efficiency of the interpreter to almost 100% and reducing overall interpreting cost, by engaging them only when communication is needed.

VRI allows the same advantage for small to medium sized medical facilities! It has not been seriously looked at by these facilities due to lack of knowledge about VRI, requirements and cost. All facilities, regardless of size, can now have VRI giving them this same immediate access to an interpreter. By using an existing computer to have this technology available for improved patient communication with very low or any startup cost. Patient Confidentiality is always a concern; VRI provides a secured video conference connection between the office and interpreter meeting all HIPAA requirements. One of the critical things to manage in many facilities is keeping doctors on schedule, if communication is delayed due to not having an interpreter, the doctor now is causing other patients to wait or not seen at all. With VRI all professionals have the ability to experience the following benefits of VRI:

Reduced risk of miss-communication.

Increased efficiencies.

Skilled interpreters in the moment.

No minimum fees.

Reduction of cost.

Reduce waiting time for unscheduled appointments.

No expensive equipment needed.

Provide communication support available 24/7/365.

The medical world is competitive while delivering quality patient care is changing and demanding, how the patient is communicated with is one major component to enhancing patient care, this communication cannot be low priority or jeopardized to avoid risk. The competitiveness of the Medical world has challenges on a facility that some think are not sustainable or can cause them to be non-existent, supplying interpreters, supporting a non-English community can have the opposite effect on a facility if effectively used. If an Ethnic population knows they can come to your facility and get quality patient care and communication, they will be very loyal, bring more business to you. With VRI you can provide professional interpreters without putting the financial future of your facility at risk and most importantly improve your patient care and visibility in your community!

Lisa Stokesbury

Sales and Business Development.
Specializing in interpreting and healthcare sales support

to over 50 major hospitals, local and state governments.
Supports continued growth of company into new markets
and product development.

Any thoughts on this post? Contact Lisa!

LisaS@vocalink.net

Global English – What it is and why you should use it.

 

Post by Lisa Gleason

At the start of this New Year, many companies are testing new strategies to make 2012 a better year than 2011. For a company that is looking to expand internationally, translation is a key factor in this process. What many do not know, however, is that the company themselves can help with the translation process.

According to John R. Kohl, author of the book Global English: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market, a document that is written in Global English makes "written texts easier to translate or easier for non-native speakers of English to read and comprehend."

What is Global English? Global English is a set of guidelines for written English that should be followed in order to publish an easily understandable document. Some of these guidelines are as basic as using shorter, more concise sentences (Kohl suggests 25 words per sentence), while others involve reorganization of sentence structure. For example, when introducing a list in the document, it should be made with complete sentences.

This would be an example of how not to introduce a list:

In addition to invoking, managing, and scrolling windows, the windowing environment can

• customize windows
• manage libraries and files
• search text.

This would be an example of how to introduce a list:

In addition to invoking, managing, and scrolling windows, the windowing environment can be used as follows:

• to customize windows
• to manage libraries and files
• to search text.

By using complete sentences in the list, the translation becomes much easier for translators whose languages have different sentence structures.

So, you may be asking yourself, why should I change the style of my documents just so it is easier to translate? If you keep the guidelines of Global English in mind while writing your company’s documents, the text will be less ambiguous and easier to translate. Not to mention, the translation process will be done quicker and be more accurate!

Lisa Gleason

Project Management intern, Translation and Localization Division.

Second year Masters student at Kent University (Translation Studies).

Expected to graduate this upcoming May.

Projects coordinator for Fortune 500 Clients.

Translation management system specialist (Vu TM).

Any thoughts on this post? Contact Lisa!

LisaG@vocalink.net

Vocalink blog initiative 2.0 - Resetting the social network.

Here we go again.
We hope you had a great Holiday season and are firmly back on the saddle heading for a spectacular 2012. It's all about keeping it simple and having clear goals, right? Ourselves, as far as the social network is concerned, are going through some major improvements - restyling our website, upgrading our tracking system and, of course, making our blog structure more flexible.

On this note, we are moving from blogger to our own platform, allowing editorial and design upgrades impossible to achieve here. Don't think that we don't love Blogger! It's an amazing platform, but we are about to have multiple authors posting and we need a perfect symbiosis between the blog and our website, plus the ability to structure multiple authors into one single platform. That's the reason for the construction sign being back up there - it's underway.

Meanwhile, our authors are getting restless and they are coming up with great posts already, in antecipation of the new blog. So here's what we'll do: starting today, we will post their contributions right here, starting a transition period that will work as a preview of our future blog. Soon we will migrate to the new platform and there you will have these posts organized by author (each will have their own section) and subject. Until then, keep an eye on us and get a taste of what's to come. Soon!