By: Perla Morley and Richard Laurion

February, 2025

Thank you all who participated in our first Interpreters and Translators Roundtable meeting of the year! A group of 19 of us from diverse backgrounds and languages --- Mandarin, Somali, Spanish, Russian, Bulgarian, and American sign language --- gathered to discuss the topics most on our minds and needing our attention. We all agreed that in order to prove our relevance as professionals in this age of outsourcing and Artificial Intelligence, we need to keep working on our skills and knowledge and support efforts to raise the required qualifications of Translators and Interpreters through legislation and national quality initiatives.

For those of us in the medical field, we need to educate providers and administrators about the advantages for improved patient outcomes when working with professional interpreters. Increasing efforts to educate consumers can also reduce our patients' concerns for how effectively to communicate with their healthcare team. As institutions rely more and more on remote interpreting, quality suffers if vendors do not do their due diligence when hiring and training interpreters. As one attendee mentioned, sometimes it is important to ask, "Sir, do you want it fast, or do you want it right?"

We all left feeling invigorated and craving more conversations and education. Stay tuned for our next Roundtable, Translators Café, and other educational opportunities, such as the in-person seminar on palliative care coming Saturday, March 29th at Children's Minnesota in Minneapolis.

We want to extend a special thanks to Sorenson Communications for providing us space for the Roundtable, and we look forward to future collaborations with our corporate partners, such as Children's Minnesota and others.