In a classic faux pas, Coca-Cola once marketed itself in China as “Ke-kou-ke-la,” which was translated into “bite the wax tadpole” or “a female horse stuffed with wax.” While a red-faced Coca-Cola survived the blunder, erroneous translations are life and death issues in hospital emergency wards and for police.
As reported in this week’s issue, many health and public safety professionals face a major catch-22.
On one hand, child interpreters under age 15 would likely be banned if the state Senate and the governor passed child psychiatrist and California State Assemblyman Leland Yee’s bill. Certainly, no child should be pressured into translating the intimate details about illnesses like cancer, heart disease or AIDS/HIV, especially during life or death situations.
Without child interpreters, hospitals will obviously need trained adult medical interpreters. However, municipal, county and state budget cutbacks threaten the availability of translators.
Such is the case in San Francisco. Under San Francisco’s proposed budget for 2004-05, the city’s Department of Public Health will reduce the number of interpreters from 14 full-time positions to only eight. Among the six positions proposed for elimination is the city’s only Tagalog translator.
Fewer translators jeopardize health and public safety.
Earlier this month, the San Francisco Police Department increased foot patrols in Chinatown. As reported in AsianWeek, when a captain was asked whether bilingual police officers would be present, he responded that the department did not have the “luxury of having [them].”
A bilingual officer and medical translator might have been critical in a November 2003 incident where police in Chinatown shot a mentally disturbed resident brandishing a pair of scissors. The wounded man was sent to S.F. General Hospital’s emergency room where doctors and nurses could depend on a medical translator competent enough to communicate the complexities of the patient’s culture, language and mental illness.
Under cases like this, the hospital cannot rely on child interpreters. Therefore, the city must budget for medical translators and bilingual police officers in these life or death situations.