LANGUAGE ACCESS RESOURCES

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This section is dedicated to a collection of resources that help facilitate professional communication among speakers of multiple languages. Some of these resources are available for download.

WHAT WE DO:

When seeking to work with interpreters, the first step is to identify the performance levels. Petra has partnered with ALTA Language Services to provide nationally known language proficiency as well as interpreting skills tests. Learn about the ALTA scale here. Schedule your language proficiency test by emailing info@petrasolutionsconsulting.com.

RESOURCES:

• Communicating with multilingual populations: this new Language Access Toolkit for Nonprofits is meant to help organizations working to serve, engage, organize, or mobilize linguistically diverse populations by considering language accessibility practices. 
• The National Council for Interpreting in Health Care is one of the primary professional associations in the United States dedicated to the development of the profession, with a plethora of resources available on their website. Among its most known resources are the Code of Ethics and National Standards of Practice.
• Among nationally accredited medical/community interpretation training, there are the popular Bridging the Gap (offered by Cross Cultural Health Care Program, based in Washington State) and The Community Interpreter (offered by Cross Cultural Communications, based in Maryland). In northeast St. Joseph Community Health Foundation and Ivy Tech Community College offer a program at www.sjchf.org/interpretertraining with limited scholarships.
• Healing Voices - Interpreting for Survivors of Torture, War Trauma and Sexual Violence. The digital version of Healing Voices is available for download. It can be used as a manual to train refugee interpreters, but this book also addresses interpreting for displaced migrants in any part of the world.
• Best Practices for Working With an Interpreter - Guide for Healthcare Professionals. The guide is available for download and it is designed to help healthcare professionals understand the benefits of using a qualified interpreter.
•  The Interagency Working Group on Limited English Proficiency (LEP) created LEP.gov in 2002.  LEP.gov is maintained by the Federal Coordination and Compliance Section (FCS) in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice. They provide a tool to develop a language access plan:   Language Access Assessment and Planning Tool for Federally Conducted and Federally Assisted Programs (lep.gov)