Indigenous Language Access in the U.S.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Lang Talent, the podcast by multilingual media about the human side of the language industry. In this episode we're talking with Jace Norton, founder of Maya Bridge Language Services. We'll dive into the realities of indigenous language access in the U.S. the challenges of recruiting interpreters for lower resource languages, and what meaningful support for these communities really looks like. Whether you're a language professional, a policymaker, or just curious about the industry, join us for this important conversation. Jace, welcome to this conversation. [00:00:40] Speaker C: Hi Eddie, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. [00:00:42] Speaker B: And you know, Jace, this is a very interesting conversation, especially in times of AI where everyone was like, oh, AI is going to solve everything. And then as will risely put, putting it there, you know, low resource languages all of a sudden is something that artificial intelligence might not be able to solve really well. But I just, I'm assuming that's, you know, going to eventually be part of our conversation. Let's get started with the scope of what we have, especially for the United States and the demand for indigenous languages. So how prevalent is this demand for indigenous languages or indigenous language access in the United States today, Jason? [00:01:25] Speaker C: So it's very, very prevalent and unfortunately it's really easy for people to not recognize it as extremely prevalent because we are looking at it. We have this unique sort of approach because our approach is that we focus on these lower resource languages and that's our primary focus. And so we're seeing demand from literally almost every single state in the country in across all sectors. So with healthcare, with legal, judicial, schools, education, community services, unaccompanied children. And so we have this sort of unique perspective on indigenous language access because we're so focused on it and we're looking for it and people are coming to us. But last year we did, I think around 15,000 interpretation assignments and over about 70% of those were for indigenous languages. So the, and we've really truly, I think we're just starting to scratch the surface. We get new hospitals every single week that reach out to us and, and you know, they have a patient that is in their care that speaks an indigenous language. This happens to us, like I said, almost every single week. And so we're, we're approaching it very differently and kind of from the opposite end of what most language service providers are doing, where they're coming in and focusing on the highest volume languages, making sure those are taken care of, we're coming from the other end and saying what are your hardest languages to source? And what we found is that it's so much more prevalent than what anyone, I think, really realizes. When you take the aggregate of all the different indigenous languages that are not in that top 20, you know, top, even top 50, most commonly requested languages. You know, people are really having a hard time finding interpreters for these languages. And it's been really fun to be able to provide that when other people, you know, have not been able to. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Jason, just to give some context to our audience, I'm assuming you're not a monopoly. You're not one who's taking 99% of the assignments and 15,000. It's just a fraction of the assignments that you expect. How big is this demand in the United States? [00:03:33] Speaker C: And the other issue is that there's a lot of demand that I think is going unmet currently. I don't think that we have a monopoly. I know that there's others that are doing similar work. I do think that we have sort of just through sheer luck in a lot of ways, but also just through our sort of tenacious and really dedicated efforts, we've become one of, if not the largest provider for specifically focused on indigenous and lower resource language access. But I think probably the main. It's really hard to determine what the real demand is for a lot of different reasons. One of those reasons is that with indigenous languages, kind of by definition, they usually have some limited proficiency in another, more dominant language, right? So when we talk about Latin American indigenous languages, which is traditionally most of the, you know, the demand that we're seeing is for Latin American indigenous languages, the Mayan languages from Guatemala, the, you know, Quechuan languages from South America, you have all of the different language groups from Mexico, most indigenous people from particularly from that part of the world, because they are so marginalized and because, you know, those societies are so dominated and have been so dominated by the Spanish language. For example, most people have some limited Spanish proficiency. And what that ends up meaning is that when those individuals go to the hospital, partially because of their own experiences in home country, where they're clearly not having language access, Right. In their indigenous languages, when they show up to places like the hospital, their first, their first avenue or their first approach to getting services is going to be to speak in Spanish. And so they're using limited Spanish proficiency, much like somebody who is from another country, you know, let's say that speaks, for example, Spanish. Right. If Spanish is their primary language, when they show up at the hospital, they're going to try to use some English to get into that appointment to get their needs, going to get their needs their appointments started. And the problem with, with indigenous languages is that I think far too many times people don't know. They're not aware of the fact that there's so many different indigenous languages. And then even when they do become aware of that, that these indigenous languages exist, they don't know where to find an interpreter, certainly not in that moment. And so you see a lot of people that end up having to work through Spanish. And I've, I've been to a lot of different conferences where I've spoken to a lot of different people, both from the industry side and also from the provider side, kind of expressing this, this issue, which is that too many times people come in and they work through and they muddle through with limited Spanish proficiency and they never actually get to their indigenous language. So when you talk about kind of quantifying the demand that's out there, I think that it's still, there's so much work to be done to raise awareness and then for us to really. And others like us to be able to actually service those languages in a meaningful way so that then we can really see what is the actual demand. And again, you know, we, we focus on every sector. [00:06:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:36] Speaker C: We don't just do healthcare, so we're doing immigration, hearing, interpretation, we're doing law firms, education. And so really, you know, I, like I said, I think we've really just barely started to scratch the surface. I think that easily 10 times what we're currently doing, we could be doing and that would be kind of still maybe not even meeting the full demand of what's out there in the United States. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Thank you, Jace, for that perspective because it really puts us in a difficult spot as citizens. I recently realized that Colombia, my home country, has over 50 indigenous languages officially recognized. And I was so surprised. I think we were talking about it on a meeting and I said how like to me, if I had to guess, it was something like sinks and not something like, not even close to like 20. So for those in the audience that like me, that might not be very involved, could you tell us a little bit about the number of languages, the indigenous languages that Maya Bridge deals with? And which ones would you consider the most under resourced out of all of those? [00:07:44] Speaker C: Sure. So, you know, as our name kind of implies, and my experience personally has been mostly with the Mayan languages of Guatemala. So that's when we started. That was the. I still think, you know, the Mayan languages of Guatemala are the most prevalent, most prevalent demand that we see. And we've just Kind of like grown outside of that. Slowly but surely, kind of month after month we would get requests for other languages. So we really have expanded throughout all of South America to cover a lot of different languages. Here in the United States, you still don't really, again, part of it is just that they're, these individuals are not having their languages identified and they're just going through, muddling through Spanish. But there's easily, I think just in South America there's over 400 different languages spoken. In Mexico, you have over 60 different languages spoken. Guatemala has 22 Mayan languages spoken there. And then you have smaller pockets throughout the rest of Central America of different indigenous languages. So when you talk about here in the United States, you know, you don't necessarily see all of those languages. We don't see all those languages necessarily, but we are, we've built up a network so that we're prepared so, so that if somebody does come and speaks, you know, one of these languages out of Colombia, we either have a resource already or we have the network in place to go and get resources when we need them. So, you know, that's just Latin America though. And you're absolutely right. I mean, we really don't, linguistically we're, we're a little bit arrogant because we are just used to everything being in these dominant languages and everyone being able to speak these dominant languages. So here in the United States you have over 270 different indigenous languages that are native to the United States and most of those are critically endangered. And you know, Navajo, for example, in my home state of Utah, Navajo, it's an issue where I've talked to many different people from Navajo reservations who have expressed that, you know, their elders, when they go to the, to the hospital and prefer to speak in their native language, they're not able to get an interpreter. We've had a few scattered requests for different Native American indigenous languages, such as like Yupik from the Alaska area or Paiute from up in the Oregon and the Nevada area. So, you know, there's always, almost always there's a way to like broaden your view and realize there's even more to do. So, you know, the Native American languages are definitely a challenge because they're really low density languages for the most part. We recently have been doing quite a bit of Micronesian indigenous languages as well. So I think technically the most difficult language, lowest resource language we've been able to help with, has been a language called Kapingamarangi, which is a Micronesian language from the island of Pompeii. And it has, I believe, somewhere around 4 to 5,000 native speakers. So very, very low density. And we had a Hospital in St. Louis that's one of our, you know, larger clients that works with us and reached out about it and we, you know, I think that's kind of again, one of the differentiators between us and others is that I think a lot of people would just kind of say, well, you know, you're not going to be able to find. And you know, realistically, yeah, it's really, really hard. We had to really dig deep, but we were able to find several different resources that have been really great and able to help. And you also have to have that mentality of, you know, there is no currently no trained kapingamarangi medical interpreter. They don't exist. [00:11:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:02] Speaker C: And so we have to be willing to put in the work and invest in those interpreters to say, we know you're not currently by profession, you're not an interpreter, but we're going to help you to gain the skills that you need to be able to interpret and help and continue to develop. [00:11:15] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:16] Speaker C: So that, that's most recently, that's been the lowest resource. We have a lot of other languages that we work with that have less than 20,000 native speakers. And yeah, there's always different challenges that go along with that. But because of our commitment to increasing language access for these languages, we were willing to do, put in all that work. [00:11:33] Speaker B: And you wouldn't imagine, right. As soon as I thought, okay, there is people that speak, there must be an interpreter. But you are completely right in most cases because they've never seen this as an actual profession. They haven't been trained for it to even be able to do that. And Jace, you know, you talk about it very casually like, oh, we just go out there and we build the network and we find them and we train them. It sounds, it sounds very easy. But how have you been able to actually like recruit those interpreters in indigenous languages given that the unique challenges that you have mentioned, like lack of training, professional training for something like this. [00:12:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, first of all, you, you can't take this passive recruiting approach. It just simply will not ever work. Obviously, if you were to put, you know, LinkedIn posts looking for Kapingamarangi interpreter, you'll never get any hits. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:25] Speaker C: Because for, first of all, it would be a freelance position. Most people are really not, especially for a low density language like that where they're maybe getting a few calls a year, a few Calls a month, you kind of don't know. People are interested in actual work. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:41] Speaker C: And so they're not looking for these types of like freelance things necessarily. And that's not to say that there's nobody willing to do it. There are people willing to do it, they're just not searching for it. So you have to find them. [00:12:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:52] Speaker C: And so you do that. You just have to be creative really at the end of the day. I mean I, in my, as I was first starting Maya Bridge, the main way that I recruited for these Mayan languages, especially where we had to have US based US authorized interpreters for our clients and that work we were doing with them, I just traveled around the United States and I would go to different areas where I'd heard rumors that there were higher density populations of people from Guatemala, Mayans specifically. And I would go meet with people, go into shops, hand out flyers, very much kind of boots on the ground, canvassing efforts. And just through that and word of mouth, you know, we were able to build up a really, really robust network of US based Mayan and other indigenous language interpreters, which is relatively unique in this industry. It's not something that most people can have and it's again, it just, it takes that extra willingness. You know, I think from a purely, from a purely financial or sort of a purely business standpoint, somebody might look at that and say, well, all this time and money that you're investing into finding these resources that you may be going to use, you don't know, you may only use them a handful of times a year. So why do you do it? [00:14:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:07] Speaker C: From a financial standpoint, it might not be sensical, but we are not doing this because we are trying to be, you know, a powerhouse company. We're doing this because we want to help the people that need it. We want to make sure that the people that need it can get access to those interpreters. So yeah, it definitely does take a lot more investment. We have to be willing to work with interpreters who are brand new, who have not gotten that training. And we're working towards making more available resources for interpreters. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:39] Speaker C: One of the biggest challenges with the Latin American languages is that you have plenty of resources who speak Spanish and that target language, but not nearly as many who speak English and that target language. And unfortunately, there's really relatively little training materials that's available to you if you don't speak English. Most of in the interpretation industry, you know, we kind of typically operate under the assumption that if you're an Interpreter, you're one of your, one of your language pairs is English here in the United States. And so all the training, all the resources that, that currently exist are mostly in English. So that's something we've been working on, being able to provide training in the Spanish language so that those interpreters that don't speak English can still get the same professional development, the same training. So, yeah, it definitely takes more investment, I think. And again, from a purely sort of financial, a business standpoint, it, you know, somebody might look at that and say, hey, you should, you shouldn't do those things. You should only focus on what's going to be your highest return on investment. [00:15:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:37] Speaker C: But that's just simply not the approach that we take as a company. It's just not our, our approach and. [00:15:43] Speaker B: It refers directly to, to the mission of the company that directly related to language access, indigenous language access. And you just mentioned that probably there is a high percentage of unmatched demand, that there's probably at least 10x out there, meaning that there is a huge gap in what it's indigenous language access. Could you speak a bit about the challenges or barriers to indigenous language access in the U.S. given this context that you have given us so far? [00:16:14] Speaker C: Sure, yeah. I mean, I think again, the big, one of the biggest issues is a lack of awareness. There's a lot of, a lot of people who just have no idea that, you know, that there are members of their community and their demographics, that they're speaking in a more dominant language with limited proficiency. And, you know, oftentimes the interpreters, the actual Spanish interpreters will recognize, hey, this person's not really understanding. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:39] Speaker C: It's really hard to get this. I feel like they're not understanding me. I'm not understanding them. But what can typically happen is that when they raise these concerns either to the company that is, you know, employing them or to the actual provider themselves, often the answer is just kind of like a, you know, a shrug the shoulders and say, well, just do your best. And that, that really is not, not only not an ethical response, it's really just not effective. [00:17:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:04] Speaker C: And that's why you get a lot of different stories that are these kind of horror stories about, you know, mothers who didn't know what consent forms they were signing and didn't know that, you know, their child was going to be circumcised or didn't know what the procedure really entailed or didn't really understand what their significant other, their partner was, their diagnosis was. So I think that one of the biggest challenges is just raising that awareness and helping people understand that it's language is really not monolithic. There's so many different languages from around the world. And just because somebody is from a certain country does not mean automatically that they speak the dominant language of that country. So I think that's kind of the biggest barrier for sure, the next biggest barrier. That's kind of the one that's going to take, you know, a lot more work. We, we try to go to different conferences all across the country and, and advocate for, you know, that raised awareness. The other piece of the puzzle is just, you know, the stuff that we've already been doing, which is how do you then find resources for these really low diffusion languages. Another kind of big roadblock is from, particularly from the side of the government. When the government wants interpreters for these languages, they typically will have really difficult restrictions on who can interpret. So you know, they want, they want them to be a US citizen or they want them to be a resident. And that's really, really difficult. You're already working with a really, really small pool of candidates. And then when you put these restrictions, it makes it even smaller. So, you know, there's, I think that there needs to be some, again, I think it comes down to that awareness of letting the government know. That's great that you would like to have, you know, US Citizens interpreting for these different types of work. But for these groups of languages, you know, you need to be aware that for sure, which is a language from Ecuador, there are no, no known resources that are US citizens, at least to us. [00:18:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:53] Speaker C: Maybe somebody has one, but I kind of doubt it. [00:18:55] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:56] Speaker C: If we, if we are not aware of it, it's not super likely that somebody else would be aware of it. So I think that that's another challenge is, is particularly in the government sector, kind of lobbying the government to understand better the sort of limitations that we have for these languages. And it really causes a lot of issues. For example, like with USCIS for these asylum interviews, right. When somebody who's been detained, right. Is not able to access an interpreter because USCIS doesn't know, they don't know who to contract with or who to find that can provide a US based X language interpreter. They basically just have to sit in detention until someone is found. [00:19:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:19:34] Speaker C: And so not only is it a huge financial burden on the United States, it's, you know, sort of, it's really inhumane to keep these people detained simply because you can't find an interpreter. So I have a lot of issue with, with that specifically. And I'm hoping to kind of get more closely sort of at the table with different government officials to help them kind of realize the true limitations. Because for a lot of languages, right, languages like the Mayan languages from Guatemala, especially what we call the Big eight, there's like eight big languages that we like really frequently get requests for. For those we've been able to find a lot of US based resources, we've been able to handle that demand. But there's other languages where again, it's just not really feasible for us to find a US based citizen who speaks an indigenous language that only has, you know, 10,000 speakers. It's just really statistically almost not feasible. [00:20:32] Speaker A: Right? [00:20:33] Speaker B: This is incredible because the more we speak, the more I'm coming up with ideas of the coverage that we're going to need to do for this, which is part of the awareness that you're talking about. The Big eight sounds like a great article that we should write about and then go into it in a lot of detail. But for that Big eight and what you're referencing right now, you're basically also making certain suggestions. What do you think needs to happen to improve language access for indigenous languages in a systemic way? There is definitely a business model. I mean, there are companies that are surviving, meaning there is significant demand for something that has so many barriers of entry and so many like legal bottlenecks here and there that things are improving. But what other things do you think need to happen in the system? Of course, the US is always leader and North America are always leading kind of like the trends. So if it happens in the north, it tends to happen elsewhere. So what are some of the things that you think need to happen in there? [00:21:38] Speaker C: Well, I think that as an industry we all need to again raise that awareness level and that then as an industry we can then appropriately address the language demand. I think that something that I've seen with, with indigenous language access is with these larger companies whose goal is really, you know, they're for profit businesses whose goal is to make profit. [00:21:59] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:59] Speaker C: And there's nothing wrong with that. But when you have that model and you, you can often lose the heart of why it is that you're doing what you do. And so they're trying to find, they're trying to be able to provide indigenous language access, but not really because they are concerned about improving indigenous language access. They are more concerned about keeping their clients happy. And when they do that, unfortunately, so what'll happen is, you know, their clients will say hey, we need a MOM interpreter. And they'll say, great, we can do it, no problem. And then they're frantically scrambling, they're contacting people like me. They're contacting maybe some other people trying to say, hey, we've got this request. And you know, unfortunately, many times that just is going to lead to, first of all, if they can't find somebody or they don't know, for example. [00:22:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:46] Speaker C: With indigenous languages, there's usually, uh, many, many instances you have different variants of that language. Meaning that, you know, somebody who speaks M from Huehuetenango speaks very differently from somebody who speaks mom from Quetzaltenango. [00:23:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:01] Speaker C: And so they don't know that possibly. And so they find someone who says, yeah, I speak mom. And they plug them into this assignment. And then it turns out they can't communicate still. And so that just creates these, not only these extra layers of, you know, the, the individual not being able to access an interpreter in their language, it also creates misconceptions on the provider side and they begin to maybe think, well, I guess it's just not feasible to get an interpreter in X language because if our vendor is not able to do it, they're a really large vendor. So, you know, or another thing will be, you know, some vendors will say, yes, we can do these languages, but you have to give us like four to five days notice. And again, that's not really language access. [00:23:42] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:42] Speaker C: That's like kind of getting to language access. But really what we're trying to do is we want these languages to be the exact same. You don't have to give us advanced notice. We'll get you an interpreter on demand. So I think as an industry, if, if people are not able or willing to do that to, to really put forth the effort to, to be able to provide on demand services and also to either, you know, to bring in the expertise that's going to know the, the nuances of. Oh, well, we need, did you ask about the variant for that language? [00:24:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:11] Speaker C: You need to know, at least have the base level knowledge that there are different variants and things like that. If you're not able to do that, you really need to step out of the ring with these languages and you need to refer to companies like Meyerbridge who, who are able to actually provide meaningful language access. And you know, I think that we are really not big competitors with some of these larger companies, meaning that we're not really aiming to take away the entire contract. We're just trying to say, hey, let us do what we do best with these lower resource languages. And so I think that in an ideal world, a larger company would say, hey, you know what? The, for us, these languages really are a drop in the bucket. We can't really do them that well. And so we're going to just refer our clients to a company like Maya Bridge, who does have that expertise. And I think it provides the same result to them, which is that their clients are happy, which is really what they're looking for. So I would say from the, from our industry, that would, in my ideal world, that would be something that would happen more where companies kind of take the, you know, relatively altruistic stance that they're going to pass on work that they may not really be qualified to do. And then from the, from the sort of language access sphere in terms of, like, policy, I think what needs to happen is we need to have better representation in conversations with government officials, with city councils, you know, at the state and the federal level to educate them. Again, education about the fact that there are so many different indigenous languages and how you can't treat these languages the same. They're not the, in the same, you know, category as a language like Spanish. And I think a lot of people who are uneducated about these languages want to just kind of group everything into the same bucket. And when you do that, you, you just not are not able to give the right attention and the right approach to indigenous language access. So, you know, we need to move away from this one size fits all mod. We need to be recognizing that indigenous language access is really important and that it's prevalent all across the United States, especially in larger cities. And then we need to have the resources already set up so that instead of somebody comes to your hospital and you don't have a resource set up, you need to be really proactive about knowing that we're going to get languages that our main vendor is not going to have. And so we need to have supplemental vendors like Maya Bridge who can come in and do what they can't. [00:26:38] Speaker B: Without a doubt, when I hear the conversation about language access, we can avoid thinking also about language conservation. The lazy thought is, okay, these languages are disappearing anyway, so why focus on them? Why even bother? How do you make sense of this conceptually as a company? What is the role that conservation has within the services that you provide? How do these two connect? [00:27:08] Speaker C: Sure, I think that language conservation is something that I would love to have more of a focus and an emphasis on. I think that obviously indirectly we are supporting the preservation of these languages. By supporting individuals rights to be able to continue to speak those languages and to not feel discriminated against. Um, it's very, very sad and unfortunate to hear so many different people who have basically said, I'm not going to teach you our indigenous language because I don't want you to be discriminated against and I want you to have a brighter future. And so I, I will literally refuse to teach you our language. And so we actually get plenty of people who come to us and ask, hey, I'm a, you know, I'm, I'm Mayan, but my parents never taught me our language, and I really want to learn it. I feel like that's part of my identity and my heritage. Do you guys offer classes? And it always hurts my heart to say, no, we don't offer any classes. So, you know, Maya Bridge really has a sort of. Currently, it kind of has a singular purpose, which is just language access. And I would really like to move toward more focus on language conservation. And we do that in. We can. There's some overlap, for sure. For example, a little while ago, we created what we call a living glossary for those big eight Mayan languages where we had our linguists translate a lot of terms relevant to unaccompanied children, which is one of the biggest sectors that we work with, and then not only provide the written translation, but also an audio recording. Most people don't probably realize that indigenous languages most typically are very orally based, meaning that because of a lack of resources, because of intentional efforts by colonialism, colonial settlers, the written portion of the language has often been very, very de. Emphasized. And so most of our linguists that can speak our indigenous languages are not actually able to read and write in those languages. They don't feel comfortable. And so we wanted to provide an audio glossary so that our interpreters could then listen to those terms and hopefully, you know, they can kind of put the, the audio with the words right and be able to maybe start learning. We're working on something similar with the Navajo language. I have a contact here in Utah who I met just through, through the Internet, who wants to work on a similar project. So we're working towards creating something similar for medical terminology in Navajo as well. But I would like to move more into direct language conservation efforts. And so we are. I've started another company that will focus a little bit more on that called myabridge Publishing. And the goal with myabridge Publishing is really to provide a platform and a space for indigenous authors and artists to express themselves to be able to create different works of art, both literature and artwork that are representative of their own communities in a way that will not be taking advantage of them. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:14] Speaker C: That they'll be able to have creative control over their, their creative works and in a way that will hopefully promote a lot of literacy efforts. So, for example, with the Kekchi language, this is the language that I speak. It's a Mayan language. I've written a couple of just short children's books that we are going to. To publish. And we're going to create a small series of like YouTube videos just to. To give as a resource for. For children and adults who are interested in gaining more literacy in their native language. But it really. It kind of takes this altruistic approach, right. There's not, it's not like there's any money to be gained from doing something like that, which is the problem. [00:30:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:30:54] Speaker C: I think that it's kind of the issue we face. So our challenge is finding a way to create companies that are for profit because we want to be independent and not be reliant on government grants and things like that, but are not just for profit, meaning that we want to make profit so that we can then use that to do all these great projects that we have in mind. So I think that's kind of the goal both with, with my Bridge Language Services and with this, this new publishing company that we're starting. We want to be able to create companies that first of all that again, are not just for profit and can reinvest profits into great projects, but then also really involve communities. And so that's kind of the goal. I would really love to move towards that in the near future. [00:31:37] Speaker B: I think what's really inspiring about this is as you're explaining this second initiative, then I'm thinking, wow, these are two machines like other as well in under Resource Language Services that are job creation machines or under resourced talent. Can you speak a little bit about the talent that you're currently looking for, the talent that you normally look for? What does this talent look like? If I am one of those talents, someone who could be an interpreter or has been trained as an interpreter in under resource languages, you know, what do we look like? What does it look like to look into Maya Bridge languages? [00:32:19] Speaker C: Yeah, so really, I mean, anybody who speaks an indigenous or a lower resource language and who has. Who speaks another dominant language, whether it's Spanish or English, we absolutely want to work with you. [00:32:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:33] Speaker C: And we're willing to invest the time and the resources into helping you to become trained because we recognize that for many different languages it's simply not realistic to be a full time Chatino interpreter, for example. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:52] Speaker C: And so we have to be able to invest into you. And so really our candidates, we, we, we, we like anybody who can speak, who can demonstrate proficiency in, in both their indigenous language and another more dominant language. Um, you don't have to speak English. [00:33:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:08] Speaker C: We work with a lot of different people who don't speak English. And then, you know, our biggest concern is we just want to have sort of as much reliability as we can as we can get. [00:33:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:19] Speaker C: Again, we, we really value being able to provide that on demand style service to our clients so that they again, so that the end user, the person who is indigenous and speaks an indigenous language can get as close to equitable, as equitable access as possible with their native language. So, so somebody who you know, doesn't, doesn't necessarily have to answer every time we call, but somebody who's eager to answer when we can call is somebody that we're looking for. So as far as qualifications go, if you, you know, have US work authorization, that's even better. But we hire from, you know, we work with a lot of different interpreters who are out of, out of the United States, living in their home countries and that works great for us as well. [00:34:01] Speaker B: And of course you've mentioned a few of the things that you know, that proactivity, that availability. What does success look like for someone who works in under researched languages? What does a successful like career look like or could look like? [00:34:17] Speaker C: I guess so in, in sort of limited circumstances there's with, with some of the larger demand languages, it's definitely possible to make a career as an interpreter for that language. More likely than not, it would be more part time for the most part. There are certain instances where, where it can happen. You know, if you live in Oakland, California for example, it's relatively likely you could be a mom interpreter because there's a lot of mom interpreter indigenous Mayans that live there. But I think most of our interpreters, the success that they find is the satisfaction of being able to help someone from their community in a moment, you know, of true need. I think that's really the reason that most of our interpreters want to work with us. They've all experienced that process of having to have learned another language, being in the diaspora, being, you know, marginalized. And so they know very intimately what it's like to be somewhere where you don't speak the language. And many of them have been in critical instances where they've had, you know, not had access to an interpreter in a healthcare scenario or in a court. And so I think, you know, all of our interpreters, I think all interpreters in general typically are more empathetic. We do it because we want to help people, but particularly with our indigenous and low resource language interpreters, they really are doing it because they want to help members of their community. And so I think the success really comes from just knowing that we're making a difference for the most part. I think that, you know, I would love to see more development of indigenous interpreters who can develop the skills and the confidence to kind of use Maya Bridge or another company as a springboard to get their feet wet in interpreting and then go out into their communities and seek their own work and work directly with clients. I think that's great. And I would love to see, you know, more of our interpreters and having the confidence and the ability to do that. And I think that in some cases, especially like in those communities, it really goes a long way to promote better language access when they can work directly, you know, at their local, you know, government institutions or hospitals and be of service. I think, you know, ideally, if you can find a way to. I know several of our interpreters are trilingual and are able to really kind of. Most of their career is centered around being a Spanish to English interpreter. And then they are able to also provide interpretation from indigenous, their indigenous language into English or Spanish as well. So, you know, if you have that skill, that's great. And you can definitely, you know, work as an interpreter and then use your indigenous language skills if and when that situation arises? [00:36:52] Speaker B: All right, and Jace, we are coming to an end of our conversation. What are your final thoughts and comments to those that are involved in indigenous language access under resource language services as interpreters, as entrepreneurs, and especially in this age and time where we're losing hope, we're saying, well, there's so little work and now you're going to bring in artificial intelligence to take even more of that work. Even though there is like a match demand, there's all these challenges that seem to go against it. What is your thought process and how do you help? How would you help us make sense of all of this? [00:37:30] Speaker C: I think that, you know, it can be disheartening and definitely it's a challenge, right? It's very sort of non traditional approach, you know, doing indigenous language access. Like I said, most people are really focused on what's going to bring the most revenue which is the most in demand languages. So I think if you're, if you're working in indigenous language access, if you're trying to make a difference, just continue to hold that motivation in your heart of the reason why we do it, which is that we really want to make a difference. We want to help people. We want to make sure that people aren't left behind, that they're not forgotten, that they're not discriminated against because of their indigeneity. [00:38:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:38:10] Speaker C: We want to make sure we avoid that. I would also say that, you know, we need to again kind of take a stand. [00:38:15] Speaker A: Right. [00:38:16] Speaker C: I think that there's so much that even you might not think that, oh, what can I do for indigenous language access? I'm just a Spanish interpreter, I don't speak an indigenous language. The reality is that really our Spanish and other more dominant language interpreters are really our first line of defense for indigenous language access. They're the ones who are going to first see something's not right. This person is really has limited proficiency in Spanish and we need to figure out what their native language is and find a resource. [00:38:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:38:46] Speaker C: And unfortunately, like I said, many, many of the sort of players in the industry are really not that concerned about indigenous language access. And so it, you know, from a sort of statistical or purely financial standpoint, it just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for them to invest all these resources into trying to get, you know, Kekchi interpreters, for example. [00:39:09] Speaker A: Right. [00:39:10] Speaker C: So are, you know, if, if you are a Spanish interpreter or even other language interpreters, like Russian, for example, Portuguese, everybody I think has a part to play in ensuring that language access for indigenous languages can improve. And you know, sometimes it can be a little bit nerve wracking to kind of take a stand and recuse yourself. You know, that's one of the pieces of advice I've given to Spanish interpreters is to say, just remove yourself if you, if you don't feel comfortable interpreting, you have the right as an interpreter to say, I'm not the right interpreter, you need to find another. And I'm, I kind of stepping away from this equation and obviously it would be great if they would, if they knew about a company like Maya Bridge, that they can then refer and say you should call them, they'll be able to help. So, you know, I think that, that everybody has a part to play. Everybody can raise their awareness about indigenous language access, about indigenous languages, and everybody can take more of a stand and be more, you know, committed to taking appropriate actions. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:04] Speaker C: If you see that the husband is speaking to the, to the wife at the hospital in another language, you gotta, you know, you gotta say something about it. You need to really try and get to the, to the root of it. So, so I think, you know, there's still so work that needs to be done and I think everybody has a part to play and that we just got to keep going even when it's, when it's difficult. My last comment would be that we definitely don't need to worry about AI for indigenous languages. It definitely will have very little part to play for a very long time. And I'm actually, I have an article coming out in multilingual sometime later this year about that specifically. So don't be worried if you're, if you're thinking about starting, you know, if you, you speak an indigenous language, you want to start an indigenous language company, you won't have to worry about AI for sure. Wow. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Thank you so much. With those final comments from Jay, we're coming to an end of our conversation. We're really looking forward to that article on the effect that AI could have in under resourced indigenous languages. Thanks everyone for listening to Language Talent once again. James Norton, CEO and founder of Maya Bridge Language Services. Chase, thank you so much for joining us. [00:41:10] Speaker C: Thanks, Eddie. Appreciate it. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Of course. Be sure to subscribe for more more episodes exploring careers, talent and the future of work in language industry. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you listen to your podcast. Until next time, goodbye.