Translators Needed!

[mtomm]

I have a friend in NYC and surrounding area asking for remote translators for hospitals.  I was thinking that missionaries could certainly help with this as they wait in quarantine.  I just have no idea how to get the contact information I have to anyone that could coordinate this.  Any ideas?  If you know of someone who can help please message me and I'll get you the contact info. Thanks!

Edited March 30, 2020 by mtomm

[Calm]

For what purpose? Volunteer work?  Sorry...read too fast and missed “.hospitals”. It is bedtime for me. 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Calm

[bsjkki]

11 minutes ago, mtomm said:

I have a friend in NYC and surrounding area asking for remote translators for hospitals.  I was thinking that missionaries could certainly help with this as they wait in quarantine.  I just have no idea how to get the contact information I have to anyone that could coordinate this.  Any ideas?  If you know of someone who can help please message me and I'll get you the contact info. Thanks!

That would be great! Missionaries know all these languages across the globe that are needed to New York hospitals right now. They could translate by live video. That would be cool. I don't know how to make those introductions between New York hospitals and the church. Maybe contact the missionary department by phone and work your way up the chain?

Edited March 30, 2020 by bsjkki

[mtomm]

16 minutes ago, Calm said:

For what purpose? Volunteer work?

Yes, just volunteer translators at the hospitals.  So they can speak with patients and their families is what I understand. 

[Scott Lloyd]

32 minutes ago, mtomm said:

I have a friend in NYC and surrounding area asking for remote translators for hospitals.  I was thinking that missionaries could certainly help with this as they wait in quarantine.  I just have no idea how to get the contact information I have to anyone that could coordinate this.  Any ideas?  If you know of someone who can help please message me and I'll get you the contact info. Thanks!

The Church has a web site and app in place for coordinating community service volunteer work. It enables either volunteers or organizations/agencies needing volunteers to go on line and find each other. And you don’t have to be a member of the Church to use it. 
 

Might be a place to start. Go to justserve.org

https://www.justserve.org/

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[Amulek]

I doubt most missionaries know any medical terminology in their foreign language. That would seem like a significant - though not necessarily insurmountable - obstacle from the get-go.

Plus, I suspect what they really want is to have translators on-site, as opposed to only available remotely via phone/ipad.

I seriously doubt the NYC mission president would be willing to disregard the church's counsel on isolating missionaries and, instead, send them straight into the biggest COVID-19 hot-zone in America. 

At a minimum, I'm guessing that is easily 250 angry mom calls that he would rather not be on the receiving end of.  

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

I doubt most missionaries know any medical terminology in their foreign language. That would seem like a significant - though not necessarily insurmountable - obstacle from the get-go.

Plus, I suspect what they really want is to have translators on-site, as opposed to only available remotely via phone/ipad.

I seriously doubt the NYC mission president would be willing to disregard the church's counsel on isolating missionaries and, instead, send them straight into the biggest COVID-19 hot-zone in America. 

At a minimum, I'm guessing that is easily 250 angry mom calls that he would rather not be on the receiving end of.

Such meetings are easily handled by Skype or Zoom.  There is no need for in-person translations.

[mtomm]

1 hour ago, Amulek said:

I doubt most missionaries know any medical terminology in their foreign language. That would seem like a significant - though not necessarily insurmountable - obstacle from the get-go.

Plus, I suspect what they really want is to have translators on-site, as opposed to only available remotely via phone/ipad.

I seriously doubt the NYC mission president would be willing to disregard the church's counsel on isolating missionaries and, instead, send them straight into the biggest COVID-19 hot-zone in America. 

At a minimum, I'm guessing that is easily 250 angry mom calls that he would rather not be on the receiving end of.  

 

They specifically asked for remote.  Which is obvious since they are not letting anyone into hospitals right now. I'm not sure medical terminology is the point so much as being able to communicate AT ALL. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

The Church has a web site and app in place for coordinating community service volunteer work. It enables either volunteers or organizations/agencies needing volunteers to go on line and find each other. And you don’t have to be a member of the Church to use it. 
 

Might be a place to start. Go to justserve.org

https://www.justserve.org/

 

Ha!  Thanks.  And we just had a talk about this in church a few weeks before the shut down.

[rongo]

2 hours ago, Amulek said:

I doubt most missionaries know any medical terminology in their foreign language. That would seem like a significant - though not necessarily insurmountable - obstacle from the get-go.

Pretty unimportant, actually. My German from my mission was pretty good, but I had to quickly learn new terms and phrases when I rented motorhomes and explained how to operate them to German-speaking tourists. You use "circumlocution," or the language you have to talk around or describe unknowns. And you learn the unknowns in the process, and they stick well in memory because you needed it in the heat of battle. 

In this situation, you are bridging the language gap in stressful, emergency settings. The non-English speakers and the hospital personnel are both very grateful for the middleman help, and it involves a lot of, "Let me ask them for specifics. Just a minute" and then, "So, what they're wondering about is . . ." No jargon or technical medial language is necessary to talk about symptoms, etc.

I remember asking a store clerk where I could find a jock strap on my mission. Of necessity, I had to phrase it as "underwear you wear for more support when you play sports" (it's "Suspendium," by the way, although nobody uses them any more, I"m sure). 

[Rain]

3 hours ago, mtomm said:

I have a friend in NYC and surrounding area asking for remote translators for hospitals.  I was thinking that missionaries could certainly help with this as they wait in quarantine.  I just have no idea how to get the contact information I have to anyone that could coordinate this.  Any ideas?  If you know of someone who can help please message me and I'll get you the contact info. Thanks!

 

3 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

The Church has a web site and app in place for coordinating community service volunteer work. It enables either volunteers or organizations/agencies needing volunteers to go on line and find each other. And you don’t have to be a member of the Church to use it. 
 

Might be a place to start. Go to justserve.org

https://www.justserve.org/

 

Just serve will let you request for projects to be put up, but it would be quicker to locate a stake president in the area so you can get the name of the Just Serve Specialist that would be over the area, contact your friend.  

Edited March 30, 2020 by Rain

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, Rain said:

 

Just serve will let you request for projects to be put up, but it would be quicker to locate a stake president in the area so you can get the name of the Just Serve Specialist that would be over the area, contact your friend.  

I’m not sure how much quicker that would be. The JustServe website has a form you can fill out (link below) if you are an organization needing volunteers. JustServe then informs the local specialist who will contact you. That’s probably all the stake president would be doing anyway (not sure how readily he would turn somebody’s contact information over to a stranger; I’d be squeamish about doing that in this day and age). 
 

I’d try going through channels like this first before doing the end run to the stake president. If the JustServe person doesn’t get back to you with reasonable dispatch, you could always try to track down the stake president later. 

https://www.justserve.org/about#what-is-section

Edited March 31, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[Rain]

31 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

I’m not sure how much quicker that would be. The JustServe website has a form you can fill out (link below) if you are an organization needing volunteers. JustServe then informs the local specialist who will contact you. That’s probably all the stake president would be doing anyway (not sure how readily he would turn somebody’s contact information over to a stranger; I’d be squeamish about doing that in this day and age). 
 

I’d try going through channels like this first before doing the end run to the stake president. If the JustServe person doesn’t get back to you with reasonable dispatch, you could always try to track down the stake president later. 

https://www.justserve.org/about#what-is-section

I was a Just Serve Specialist. I understand how it works. From my experience finding someone in the stake who knows who the JS specialist is, is quicker than going through the website. 

Since the specialist is a stake calling I suggested the SP, but it could be anyone in the stake who knows the person or could look up in tools for the calling.

Edit: and that was part of my calling - to take calls like that. I'm also not sure why the SP would be reluctant to share a JSS number, but it would be ok for the website to share it.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Rain

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

I was a Just Serve Specialist. I understand how it works. From my experience finding someone in the stake who knows who the JS specialist is, is quicker than going through the website. 

Since the specialist is a stake calling I suggested the SP, but it could be anyone in the stake who knows the person or could look up in tools for the calling.

Edit: and that was part of my calling - to take calls like that. I'm also not sure why the SP would be reluctant to share a JSS number, but it would be ok for the website to share it.

One of the last stories I wrote for the Church News two years ago was on JustServe, based on interviews with the couple who had been called to set up and run the program Church-wide, as well as the Seventy member and the apostle who are over it, plus a number of on-the-ground folks who administer it locally and some individuals and organizations who have benefitted from it. So I know something of how it works too. 

What I had in mind was that the representative of the organization desiring volunteers would leave his/her contact information on the website, which would then perhaps be screened or at least recorded by the JustServe organization and then relayed to the local specialist, who would then contact the organization’s representative directly. It would save the trouble of tracking down and contacting the stake president, because the JustServe organization would know who the local specialist is. 
 

Strikes me as a tad safer, if not more efficient, but perhaps I’m too careful. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[Rain]

14 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

One of the last stories I wrote for the Church News two years ago was on JustServe, based on interviews with the couple who had been called to set up and run the program Church-wide, as well as the Seventy member and the apostle who are over it, plus a number of on-the-ground folks who administer it locally and some individuals and organizations who have benefitted from it. So I know something of how it works too. 

What I had in mind was that the representative of the organization desiring volunteers would leave his/her contact information on the website, which would then perhaps be screened by the JustServe organization and then relayed to the local specialist, who would then contact the organization’s representative directly. It would save the trouble of tracking down and contacting the stake president, because the JustServe organization would know who the local specialist is. 
 

Strikes me as a tad safer, if not more efficient, but perhaps I’m too careful. 

I'm not really sure how they would go about screening it anymore than I would. One of the first things we were to do was to contact any charities that we could find in our stake boundaries to see if they would like to use us.  Then we somewhat screened them to find out if they fit what JS does - things such as get a copy of their 501c status if they had the status.  

It would be really odd to me for the church to be screening them when they were delegating that to us.

It isn't odd at all for me and many of the women I know to get calls like this and similar.  I talk to many different charities and volunteers a lot.  If you want people to help you then you have to be willing take these kind of calls.

 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

I'm not really sure how they would go about screening it anymore than I would. One of the first things we were to do was to contact any charities that we could find in our stake boundaries to see if they would like to use us.  Then we somewhat screened them to find out if they fit what JS does - things such as get a copy of their 501c status if they had the status.  

It would be really odd to me for the church to be screening them when they were delegating that to us.

It isn't odd at all for me and many of the women I know to get calls like this and similar.  I talk to many different charities and volunteers a lot.  If you want people to help you then you have to be willing take these kind of calls.

 

From the hypothetical standpoint of a group needing volunteers, I think it would be more convenient and efficient to fill out a form on a website and wait for a response than it would be to ascertain which of a church’s clergy in a given area has jurisdiction over my group, then try to find that person’s phone number and call him, then try to call his subordinate or perhaps have to wait for him to relay it and then have the subordinate call me. 

Furthermore, if I were not a member of the Church, I might feel more comfortable with this JustServe thing if it were not replete with ecclesiastical trappings such as having to work through somebody’s “stake president.” In fact, one thing I remember clearly from my interviews is that they deliberately tried to not make it seem too churchy lest they frighten away potential users. 

And again, I’m not certain the one way of doing it is quicker than the other. If the JustServe system is so clunky that it takes days, weeks or months to get a call back after filling out the form on the website, then, by all means, do your end run and try to reach the stake president if you can. I’m just saying I’d give the established procedure a try first. 
 

Incidentally, is it only women who serve in your position? Just curious, but I thought it was open to females or males. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, mtomm said:

They specifically asked for remote.  Which is obvious since they are not letting anyone into hospitals right now. I'm not sure medical terminology is the point so much as being able to communicate .

Why would they have to know Medical terminology? They would be translating for the patient to the doctor. And vice versa. Presumably the doctor is not going to be using medical terminology to the patient and vice versa.

They w would just have to be able to ask questions like "How long have you been coughing? Do you have pain in your chest?" etc.

[Calm]

32 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Why would they have to know Medical terminology? They would be translating for the patient to the doctor. And vice versa. Presumably the doctor is not going to be using medical terminology to the patient and vice versa.

Ventilator, incubate, and Resuscitate are unlikely to be known by missionaries, I suspect.  Medical terminology is not just technical terms only professionals use.

[Scott Lloyd]

33 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Why would they have to know Medical terminology? They would be translating for the patient to the doctor. And vice versa. Presumably the doctor is not going to be using medical terminology to the patient and vice versa.

They w would just have to be able to ask questions like "How long have you been coughing? Do you have pain in your chest?" etc.

If a medical provider is so jargon-bound that he can’t make himself understood to a  lay person, he probably needs an English-to-English interpreter quite as much as a foreign-language one. 

[Scott Lloyd]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

Ventilator, incubate, and Resuscitate are unlikely to be known by missionaries, I suspect.  Medical terminology is not just technical terms only professionals use.

På svenska:

ventilator, bära på, återuppliva

 

[pogi]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

Why would they have to know Medical terminology? They would be translating for the patient to the doctor. And vice versa. Presumably the doctor is not going to be using medical terminology to the patient and vice versa.

They w would just have to be able to ask questions like "How long have you been coughing? Do you have pain in your chest?" etc.

They will ask about comorbidities such as history of chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, immunocompromising conditions, etc.  They will want to know their medications too.  They will need consent for any treatment, and if they are not using a translator with good medical vocabulary, it could be a huge liability if the patient doesn’t really understand what they were fully consenting to, or if the doctor doesn’t fully understand the patients condition and medications before treating.

Law suits sky rocket in epidemics/pandemics.  It’s a fine balance in those situations of being resourceful and stretching while doing your best to cover your own butt.

Edited March 31, 2020 by pogi

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

From the hypothetical standpoint of a group needing volunteers, I think it would be more convenient and efficient to fill out a form on a website and wait for a response than it would be to ascertain which of a church’s clergy in a given area has jurisdiction over my group, then try to find that person’s phone number and call him, then try to call his subordinate or perhaps have to wait for him to relay it and then have the subordinate call me. 

 

From a non hypothetical standpoint of someone who has been with a number of charities, worked with over a thousand volunteers over 3 decades I'll have to disagree with you.

Quote

 

Furthermore, if I were not a member of the Church, I might feel more comfortable with this arrangement if it were not replete with ecclesiastical trappings such as having to work through somebody’s “stake president.”

Which is why I suggested that mtomm get the number of the JSS to give to her.

Quote

And again, I’m not certain the one way of doing it is quicker than the other. If the JustServe system is so clunky that it takes days, weeks or months to get a call back after filling out the form on the website, then, by all means, do your end run and try to reach the stake president if you can. I’m just saying I’d give the established procedure a try first. 

 

It doesn't take months, but from real experience it can be quicker and given the nature of the thing wanted I suggested a way that may be quicker.  

And it is not the procedure.  It is one of the ways to do it.  As a JSS the first thing we were supposed to do was to seek out places like this that needed volunteers.  I was thrilled when members called me to let me know of some in my area and so were all the other JSS I worked with.

The reason it is on the website is so that if you didn't know who your JSS was or didn't know they even existed you could still get your project on there.

Quote

 

Incidentally, is it only women who serve in your position? Just curious, but I thought it was open to females or males. 

No. It is open to men and women and even couples. I wasn't just talking about just JSS and I no longer have that calling. 

Women are the overwhelming number of charity leaders I have worked with, the majority of JS leaders I know. The leaders in my organization are all women. 

This will be the end of my part in this discussion.  The only reason I said anything in the first place was to better help mtomm.  Anything more would be unproductive, I believe. 

Good luck mtomm! 🙂

Edited March 31, 2020 by Rain

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

The reason it is on the website is so that if you didn't know who your JSS was or didn't know they even existed you could still get your project on there.

Presumably by having the JustServe organization put you in touch directly with the local JustServe specialist so that person can help you “get your project on there” — which is the whole point anyway, right? That way, you don’t have to be dependent on word of mouth, or trying to contact somebody you think is a member of the Church or having to know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody else, etc. 
 

Seems like a very efficient system to me: Fill out an online form and expect somebody to follow up with you. Maybe it doesn’t work in each and every instance, but if not, then you try something else, like word-of-mouth networking. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Scott Lloyd

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Fill out an online form and expect somebody to follow up with you

But filling out forms always tends to have a time element in that is fine in the usual process, but doesn’t usually work with emergency situations. In emergencies from what I hear in the stories people tell, church and charity leaders often skip the filling out of forms and track down people who can make things happen. The grapevine or people who you know is often what gets things done quickly. Makes sense to me in this case to find a one step away source you can talk to immediately rather depend on emails that may or may not be one in a long line right now waiting to be processed by possibly one person who is working when they have time (volunteer).

I have filled out forms for the ask a church historian a number of times. There have been times I have gotten a message back in a day, others it has been closer to a week. It has always been faster to go to people who know or know someone who knows, however there are times I don’t get answers that way where I always get answers through the form system. 

In an emergency when time counts, I take the shortcuts and hope it works.  Probably not a bad idea to do both in case the direct approach doesn’t work. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Calm

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

Ventilator, incubate, and Resuscitate are unlikely to be known by missionaries, I suspect.  Medical terminology is not just technical terms only professionals use.

Have you ever been on a ventilator?

"We are going to put you on a machine that will help you breathe"

That's about all the instruction I got for a ring and valve job....   - triple bypass and valve replacement . All that I knew was that I would be technically dead for a couple of hours and the Machine would Breathe for me and circulate my blood.  I didn't need to know how to run the thing

" From 1 to 10 how much does it hurt?"

" Does it hurt over here?"

This is not rocket science. They're not teaching a class in medicine.

If they're giving someone a medical education they would be stupid to ask for just translators. 

I would think they know their business well enough to know what they need without our advice.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

If a medical provider is so jargon-bound that he can’t make himself understood to a  lay person, he probably needs an English-to-English interpreter quite as much as a foreign-language one. 

Well said, my point exactly.