In response to the increasing demands of serving a diverse global community, the New Castle County Marriage Bureau has begun using virtual language translators.
Accurate Language Services (ALS) provides “real time” language and document translation services for 200 languages. Based on current needs, the Marriage Bureau anticipates using ALS most often for Chinese, Ukrainian, and Russian speaking clients, according to Clerk of the Peace Kenneth Boulden, Jr.
The communication exchanges will be done via telephone and the Internet. ALS also serves the court system in Delaware.
For the hearing impaired, the Marriage Bureau uses the services of Language Line Services (LLS) – the largest interpretation service provider in the world. Communication with hearing impaired persons will be done in American Sign Language, using the Marriage Bureau’s new video translation application on computers and Smartphones.
Clerk of the Peace Boulden says, “It is extremely helpful that some of my staff is fluent in Spanish, and the addition of these new services will allow us to even better communicate with the diverse community of customers we serve.”
County Executive Tom Gordon says, “This is another example of our employees finding cost effective ways to improve customer services.”
The subscription fees for these new services are less than $100 a year.
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