Protecting Workers With Words. ** You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the by-line is included. Notification of publication would be appreciated. Please send notification to mgalindo@translationsandmore.com ** Last week, I had a confirmed job from a new client... a video company that needed a professional recording of a training video in Spanish for the construction industry. Lately, there has been an increasing trend of similar projects for construction companies. I believe that my client's proactive approach is related to a new labor demographics scenario existing in the US. I've asked myself many times before, if construction workers do not speak enough English, how can they read the safety precautions on most of their heavy industrial machinery, machinery like electric saws, chipping hammers and welding torches. What about the workers building skyscrapers or factories? How do they understand what they are supposed to do or which safety precautions to follow? The importance of saying the right words, in the right language and at the right time prevents accidents and saves lives. They may open up someone's eyes or shut them forever. You may be familiar with the fact that the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a.k.a. OSHA, says that "You must train people in a language they understand". Not a complicated thought, simple if anything, but this thought gets ignored, overlooked and tossed aside until something tragic and costly happens. Let's focus for a second, on what the construction industry is doing about this language obstacle. For example, Hispanics are the largest minority in the workforce. "Hispanics, who make up about 11% of the workforce, hold 17.4% of all construction jobs — up from 9.6% in 1990," according to Jim Hopkins, USA TODAY more... Ok, then we can assume that a substantial percentage of all qualified and competent workers speak English poorly? They know their trade. We need their skills and their dedication... but how do we ensure their safety and the safety of everyone involved? It is our responsibility as the people in charge of communications to protect them by using the words they understand. According to USA Today "Construction is the leading source of workplace fatalities: in 2000 it accounted for almost 20%" - all attributed to the fact that there was a language barrier. Out of these accidents, the languages spoken by the workers involved on these accidents were Spanish, Polish and Vietnamese. Language barriers. If we know that many Hispanic laborers are Mexican immigrants who don't speak enough English and their supervisors often don't speak Spanish, then safety training becomes harder. This is where translating training materials into Spanish becomes a way of facilitating training and saving valuable project time. However some supervisors, on their own initiative, are taking a different approach to safety and language obstacles. For example, Jennifer Pittman of the San Jose Business Journal writes about construction work safety "Mr. Sullivan, a safety officer at Devcon Construction, says he's got a long way to go before he can communicate the company's complex safety standards to a construction crew of mostly Spanish speakers." "That's why I'm taking the class, to be able to better communicate to prevent the potential injury from occurring," he says, more. Hats off to Mr. Sullivan. As for those companies that are ignoring this situation, the government is implementing another more costly approach for them. "The number of construction-site inspections last year more than doubled, at 3,308 inspections, up from 1,515 inspections in 1999, according to Dean Fryer, spokesman for the California Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the California Division of Occupational Safety," reports Jennifer Pittman of the San Jose Business Journal, more. Incident investigations, occurrence reviews, fact-finding meetings are all related to a safety program and the costs come out of the company's pockets. You can avoid much of this cost by having materials available to your workforce in the language they understand - in the one they will react faster to in case of an emergency. Organizations sometimes lose that collective memory and that is why there is a need to document facts and pass them along so that, hopefully, the same mistake is not repeated. Money Saving Tip. If your industry allows it, buy from companies that already offer training materials in other languages. Do not reinvent the wheel and assume the cost by yourself. If materials are too expensive, do not stop there. You may check with your professional trade organization. Or maybe a colleague needs the same and you can share the foreign language training library costs... why not? More and more employers will be prohibited from instituting English-only policies in the workplace. The law makes it clear that employers can't forbid their workers from speaking languages other than English while on the job. However, it seems that in many state and local agencies, only the letter of the law rather than the intent is obeyed, and ignoring this problem will cost companies a bundle in insurance, and punitive payments - not to mention the damage to the corporate image. What do you think? Should we wait for more law enforcement by having the government contracts specify the need for mandatory translation in more construction projects across the country? Or we can take a proactive approach and start planning for those items in our areas of responsibility? Send me your thoughts. 'Cause I've missed them... Martha. ********************************************************************** About the Author, if using, please include: Martha E. Galindo, President and CEO of Galindo Publicidad, Inc. A multilingual translations agency, selected twice as a Florida 100 company. Author of “How Do You Say…?” an eNewsletter designed to help you improve your business communications in other languages, Subscribe http://www.translationsandmore.com/subscription.html GPI, Inc. Request a free project quote- http://www.translationsandmore.com/contact.html ***********************************************************************