Translating 'Preparedness' into Vietnamese

In multi-lingual communities, civil authorities have to work harder and smarter to prepare for emergencies and cope with their aftermath. It's happening in Alabama.

Sophin Khan, 11, shows where the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina crested in his house, in Bayou la Batre, Alabama, sparing his family's most prized possession, a painting of their native Cambodia. His 13 year old sister took this photo, part of a documentary project at Alba Middle School.

When the extent of the disastrous Gulf oil spill became clear, BP realized it would need translators to work with the Asian shrimpers and crabbers in south Mobile County, Alabama. So the oil giant did what big, multinational corporations usually do—brought in Vietnamese translators from the outside.

The only problem was the translators spoke a dialect of Vietnamese different from people in the community, so different the two groups couldn’t understand each other.

That’s when BP officials called Mike Dillaber, an expert in emergency management and a project director with the Community Foundation of South Alabama. Dillaber and the community foundation had been part of a FEMA-funded project after Hurricane Katrina to connect emergency managers with Asian community leaders so they could get to know each other—and each other’s needs—before the next disaster struck.

FEMA realized that too often national, state and even local emergency managers didn’t know anyone in their immigrant communities. That inexperience cost time, money—and in some cases, lives. Because of the connections he made for the FEMA project in south Mobile County, Dillaber was immediately able to give BP the names of reputable translators in the community. The company could quickly begin interviewing and training local residents for work related to the spill.

“It’s about credibility,” Dillaber says. “There are lots of people now asking for information, and connections are being made a lot quicker than they used to be.”

http://www.dailyyonder.com/translating-gulf-coast-aid-vietnamese/2010/06/21/2806

Topics: Building Community, Community Health, English Language Learning-ELL, Health Care Access, Immigrants, News, Public Health, Receiving Communities