We’ve spent the past few months trying to put into words what it is we do every day. For some, we translate marketing materials into Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese. For others, we help them call customers who don’t speak English. For many, we help ensure they get the medical care they need.
And we’ve finally managed to sum these up in one, simple mission:
Enhance the health and well-being of the global community through world-class translation and interpreting.
Lynn Elfers started our company in 1999 to provide medical interpreting to hospitals and doctors’ offices in the Cincinnati area, and that remains the core of our business. At its heart, medical interpreting is about providing equal access to care. But there’s more to access than just interpreting.
Federal law says hospitals which accept Medicaid, Medicare, or other federal funding, “must take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to their programs and activities” for people who do not speak English. Providing written material in addition to spoken is one such reasonable step, and we’ve been helping local health care providers with this for more than ten years.
Yet simply handing work over to bilingual people does not guarantee meaningful access. I’ve seen many signs and instructions written in English by self-professed bilingual people which are too confusing to be understood. And what about the signs which aren’t in English? How can we be sure our translators and interpreters aren’t producing gibberish?
You deserve the best, and we want to provide nothing but the best. The services we provide today are indeed world-class, and we will continue to improve and grow as the profession itself develops.
If you share our mission, let us know – we’d love to partner with you.