The Center in Orlando has partnered with the CCI Group to provide language translation services to their clients.
Joel Junior Morales, director of operations at The Center, and Indy Vega, president of CCI Group, joined Intersection to discuss the additional language services and how it will help them better serve Central Florida's growing and increasingly diverse community. .
Morales says that The Center has a couple of staff members that speak Spanish, but other languages and communities are not as well served.
“We know that in Central Florida, a lot of people are moving into our community that speak multiple languages. Our community is very diverse. And a lot of times, people may not access the services that are intended for them, because we may not speak their language or may not have the resource to provide that service to them.”
The service is a 24-7 resource over the phone that pulls interpreters from anywhere in the world. The Center has their own line with CCI, which links clients to professional translators. Vega says that the staff just needs to dial with the number code for the specific language.
“The whole process between the time that the staff member calls to the moment that the interpreter starts enabling communication is less than a minute,” she says.
The Center has already started using the service, says Morales. He says that once the office established the number, a Portugese family came in and they were able to help them find someone that could speak their language. He hopes that through word-of-mouth, people will know that the organization is providing translation services and it will build trust in their communication.
“We want to make sure that we are representing diversity and in an important way, in a very inclusive way.”
Vega says that the difference between a professional interpreter and a relative being present at appointments and other meetings becomes apparent when translating heavy topics.
“We're not there to correct the message. We're not there to add or subtract anything. We are there just to relay the information as accurately and as effectively as possible. We don't change or alter anything,” she says.
Morales says he has seen a lot of changes since he arrived in Central Florida 10 years ago and feels connected to the nonprofit he works for, especially now that they are providing even more support for a diverse community like Orlando. But this is just a start.
“We still have a long way to go when it comes to equity and when it comes to ensuring that our most marginalized communities are being served properly and having the access that they deserve and what's right to them,” he says.