Open to interpretation

A booming U.S. immigrant population and the war on terrorism are pushing the language-services industry into double-digit growth this year.

The $9.5 billion industry for translation and interpretation is expected to grow 37 percent to $13 billion by 2007, according to a 2002 study by Allied Business Intelligence Inc., an Oyster, N.Y., technology-research think tank.

Translation is defined as changing written text into another language, while interpretation is changing conversation into another language.

“Translation services dropped off after 9/11, but they, like the global economy, are slowly coming back,” said Walter Bacak, executive director of the American Translators Association, an Alexandria trade group with9,000 members.

The 2000 census reported about 760,000 immigrants lived in the Washington area, with more than 200,000 each in Montgomery and Fairfax counties.

The area immigrant population was estimated to grow by almost 50,000 between 2001 and 2002.

Independent interpreters and translators dominate 70 percent of the market, but language-service companies are capitalizing on the growing demand for faster and more-accurate services, Mr. Bacak said.

For example, hospitals are required under a civil rights statute to have an interpreter service for non-English-speaking patients. And more private and public schools are teaching non-English-speaking students, driving up the need for interpreters, according to the Education Department.

Some Washington health care providers, such as the Children’s National Medical Center, hire a staff of full-time interpreters based on the area’s demographic makeup.

Children’s has staff proficient in Spanish, French, Vietnamese and other languages but uses a backup interpreting service, LLE Inc., for the rare patient who speaks Swahili or another obscure language, said Brenda Shepherd-Vernon, manager of language services.

Other hospitals opt for an interpreting service over the phone or through video conferencing to lower costs, said George Ulmer, chief executive officer of NetworkOmni, a California interpreting-services company.

“If it’s a life-threatening situation, a local interpreter can’t get there quick enough. But we can connect a doctor to an interpreter in 15 to 20 seconds,” Mr. Ulmer said.

While the company has interpreters stationed in the Washington area, the bulk of last year’s 5 percent revenue growth came from NetworkOmni’s over-the-phone services, Mr. Ulmer said, declining to disclose financial numbers.

NetworkOmni is the second-largest language-services company after Language Line Services LLC. NetworkOmni translates more than 150 languages, the most popular being Spanish, Mandarin and Vietnamese.

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