9/05/00 12:55 p.m.
More Translations than the U.N.
It's no way to run a hospital.

By Jim Boulet Jr., Executive Director English First

he United Nations has but six official languages. Thanks to the Clinton-Gore administration, the Maine Medical Center, based in Portland, now has nine official tongues and counting.

Under a July settlement between the Maine Medical Center (MMC) and the Office of Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), the Maine Medical Center must post a "Interpreter Availability Sign" to be "printed at least in English, Farsi, Khmer, Russian, Serbo-Croatian (Cyrillic and Roman alphabets), Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese."

There is more to this settlement. Hospital personnel must be "inform[ed] that MMC's policy of providing in-person and telephone interpreter services to LEP [Limited English Proficient] persons is not limited to languages in which [the Interpreter Availability Sign] and other documents are printed." In other words, anyone who arrives at the front desk claiming to speak any language in the world has an unlimited claim for translation services.

In fact, the Maine Medical Center is to "always have in place policies and procedures . . . designed to enable effective communication with LEP persons, in languages they can understand, in MMC's programs and activities, during all hours of their operation, at every MMC location covered by this Agreement." Clearly, any attempt by the hospital to impose a rational limit on translation costs will invite further litigation.

The mandatory multilingual requirements apply even to "classes concerning . . . weight management." The organizers of "religious services or spiritual counseling provided at MMC" must also offer translations or alternative programs on demand.

Precisely how many languages a particular minister must speak in order to be allowed to comfort a dying member of his congregation on hospital grounds awaits further clarification from HHS.

The Maine Medical Center now must also practice affirmative action on the basis of language, as though it were located in Quebec:

MMC shall consider fluency in English and one or more other languages spoken by LEP persons residing in its service area as a positive job qualification when selecting or assigning staff who have patient contact responsibilities.

Imagine the job-assignment headache for the personnel office trying to comply: "Hilda must work overtime on Saturday night because we expect more Farsi speakers to arrive, while Jeremy gets Sunday morning because we expecting more Russian speakers. And we need to hire Doctor Yee, whose Spanish is better than Dr. Gonzales's."

The most pernicious portion of this agreement is that it holds the Maine Medical Center responsible for the accuracy of all translations:

When MMC staff have reason to believe that an interpreter from a professional agency, a telephone interpreter service, its bilingual staff or MMC's interpreter list is not qualified or properly trained to serve as an interpreter, or is hampering effective communication between MMC staff and a LEP person, MMC shall obtain another interpreter.

If a staff member does not speak language being translated, precisely how is he to evaluate the accuracy of that translation? The short answer is, he can't. But there will be plenty of personal-injury lawyers who will be glad to "help." Picture the hapless emergency-room nurse being grilled on the witness stand: "Why weren't you aware that the instructions you were giving were translated into Cantonese rather than my client's native Mandarin?"

This extreme approach to language rights is not just Maine's problem. On August 30, President Clinton interrupted yet another foreign trip to issue a statement commending the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) "for being the first federal agency to respond to Executive Order 13166."

Executive Order 13166 declared that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act creates a right to government services in the language of one's choice. As interpreted by Assistant Attorney General Bill Lann Lee, Executive Order 13166 means:

A federal aid recipient's failure to assure that people who are not proficient in English can effectively participate in and benefit from programs and activities may constitute national origin discrimination prohibited by Title VI.

The truly frightening part of this radical redefinition of national-origin discrimination to include language choice is that it may well apply to every other law which uses the term "national origin."

According to the Center for Equal Opportunity, as of August 30, "national origin" appears 343 times in the U.S. Code and 922 times in the Code of Federal Regulations. In addition, many state and local anti-discrimination laws mimic federal terminology.

This means that one day you may well get a call from a government agency threatening a costly lawsuit because the Danish version of your firm's employee handbook was inaccurate. You too will be offered a "Voluntary Compliance Agreement" similar to the one signed by the Maine Medical Center. Such an agreement will be as "voluntary" as the Godfather's "offer they can't refuse," and enforced in the same gentle fashion.

Evidently, it wasn't enough for the Clinton-Gore administration to get America involved in the Balkans. They have decided to Balkanize America.