Multilanguage Voice Systems (and Good Copywriting)

As Web editorial directory for TMCnet, I am the consumer of about 2,000 press releases a week, which come into our site partly via feeds and partly through submissions by company PR reps using our Content Submission tool.

This one about multi-language IVRs came in today via PRNewswire and is a praiseworthy example of good copywriting if for nothing other than its headline:

Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish, Press 3 for Urdu, Press 4 for Macedonian

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- As the global economy expands, and as the population of foreign-born-residents living in the U.S. increases, businesses, healthcare providers, and government agencies, are being asked to accommodate the needs of people who speak languages other than English.

The first contact with clients is often by telephone, and more and more businesses, hospitals, and government agencies, are making accommodations in their telecommunications systems.

The Translation Station, a 13-year old translation and interpretation company, now offers Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system recordings in any of 150 foreign languages.

"This works particularly well in fields where non-English-speaking clients can get most or all of the information they need from an automated system," says Jennifer Gilbert, The Translation Station's Marketing Director. "The financial community is probably the biggest user of the service since virtually all account information can be retrieved over the phone."

According to the U.S. Census bureau, at the end of 2002, the U.S. had 33 million people, 11.8% of the population, who were natives of other countries. By comparison, in 1990, some 20 million people, or 7.9% of the population, had been born abroad.

"When we started the service several years ago, we primarily worked with Spanish," adds Gilbert. "Now it's not unusual for a client to ask us to input a dozen or more languages, and many require the more exotic languages, such as Haitian Creole, Hmong, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and so on."

The Translation Station supports its clients with two additional language services.
"First, for those that need to have more in-depth conversations with their clients we now provide both Over-The-Phone and Onsite Interpretation services. And, second, we offer document translation services between English and any of 150 foreign languages," says Gilbert.

The Translation Station, one of the nation's largest language companies, has provided translation and interpreter services to many of the Fortune 500 corporations, Top 100 intellectual property and international trade law firms, and government offices, including, the Department of Defense, NASA, the U.S. International Trade Representatives, and The White House.

For more information contact:
Jack Bernstein
310-792-3637
Internet Fax: 509-984-3576
[email protected]

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AB 3/22/05