The federal government mandates that local governments receiving federal funds must offer language services for those who have limited understanding of the English language -- or see that funding withdrawn. The Department of Justice ruled in recent years that failing to provide language translation constitutes a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on national origin.
If a community's non-English-speaking population reaches 3,000 people or 10 percent of the total population, whichever is less, the Justice Department requires the jurisdiction to translate all documents and information into that language. Spanish is the only language in Northern Virginia that currently meets that threshold.
Federal law also requires immediate access to translation of any language; thus the phone service, which charges $1.60 a minute for common foreign languages and $3.69 a minute for more "exotic" languages such as Bengali, Maldonado said.
So, with 68 percent of the state's foreign-born population living in Northern Virginia, local governments have had to take action and find ways to bear the cost.
Maldonado said the Department of Human Services recently spent about $800 a month on phone translation. "And that's because, with our bilingual staff, we don't have to worry about Spanish," she said. The police department's monthly phone bill often reaches $3,000 just for phone interpretation.
"We just somehow figure it out in our budget to have it covered," she said. Or they squeeze the work into their own busy schedules, like the time when a document was going to cost $12,000 to translate, so she and a co-worker did it themselves.
And, Maldonado said, translation isn't so simple.
Once, a co-worker came to her perplexed. "They're asking me for a colilla. Why would they ask for a cigarette butt?" she asked. In Puerto Rico, where the caseworker learned Spanish, colilla means cigarette butt, Maldonado explained. In El Salvador, it means pay stub.
But beyond language, governments are sending workers to cultural sensitivity training and teaching workers about nonverbal communication in different cultures. For example, in some cultures, people won't look you in the eye when they're talking, as a sign of respect. In other cultures, touching is taboo.
In many cultures, it's impolite to disagree with a person to his face, said Angie Carreras, language access coordinator for Fairfax County.
"If you're a caseworker, the client may not verbally disagree with you, but they won't take the kid to the therapist because they don't know what that therapist is going to do," she said. "So sometimes, services are not used effectively because we haven't built bridges into different communities."
Maldonado said she often runs into resistance, both from inside and outside the government. She hears comments such as, "We're an English-only state, we don't need to do this." Or, "They should learn English." Once, when an emergency preparedness document was translated into Arabic, an angry citizen accused the agency of sharing strategies with the enemy.
"My response was, 'Don't you want to make sure that everyone understands what to do in an emergency, for the good of the whole community?' " Maldonado said. "And I always tell people that I have yet to meet an immigrant who does not want to learn English, isn't already taking classes or looking for them. Unfortunately, it's not an easy process, and it doesn't happen very quickly."
Barbara Gordon, spokeswoman for the city of Alexandria, said the population is so mobile and so diverse, that the need for a language access plan rises above politics. "This is a real need we have," she said.
Maldonado sums up city leaders' philosophy: "We want to do this not because the federal government mandates that we do it," she said, "but because it's the right thing to do."
