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Why?

When you do something every day, you tend to lose perspective from time to time. It’s the nature of work that we get so close to what we do that we sometimes forget why we’re doing it.

Three recent news items have refreshed our perspective and reminded us of our why. They prompt us to remember that what we do each day is actually pretty remarkable.

The Importance of Language Access

  1. In a first-person article titled “How a Disembodied Voice Can Be a Lifeline Between Medics and Terrified Patients,” a UK physician provides a dramatic account of how he worked with one of our over-the-phone interpreters to connect with a learning-disabled woman who did not understand English. “As a stream of Polish broadcast into the room, Hanna’s shoulders, which had been hunched, fell, and she sat back more easily in the chair,” he writes. “It struck me she might be allowing herself to imagine it was her own mother who was there with her.”
  2. The New York Stock Exchange recently welcomed Wells Fargo in celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Honoring the occasion, Kathy Martinez, Wells Fargo’s Senior Vice President of Disability and Accessibility Strategy, rang the NYSE closing bell with the assistance of a LanguageLine® OnsiteSM interpreter.
  3. Potter County, Texas, realized after the 2016 election that limited-English speaking residents, as well as the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, felt excluded during election season. Officials decided to innovate. Potter County is the state’s first to use video interpreting to make the voting process more accessible, which they believe will encourage turnout.

The common theme among these articles is people benefiting from language-access to realize their equality. Notice I did not say “to become equal.” They were already equal.

What we do is provide language-access solutions. Why we do it is to act as a great leveler, establishing the equality to which every person is entitled.

Language access helps ensure justice, save lives, welcome newborns, and build futures. We are passionate about seeing people smile when they are understood, and their equal footing is restored. This is the experience for which we live.

This is why.

About LanguageLine 

LanguageLine has been the world leader in innovative language-access solutions since 1982. The company sets the global standard for phone, video, and onsite interpreting, as well as translation of the written word. LanguageLine is trusted by more than 30,000 clients to enable communication with the limited English proficient, Deaf, and Hard of Hearing communities. LanguageLine provides the industry’s fastest and most dependable access to more than 35,000 professional linguists in 290-plus languages — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

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