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Healthcare organizations must comply with many different regulations and standards. So, it’s no wonder that there’s confusion about the kinds of documents these organizations should translate! Thankfully, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to your healthcare translation projects. If you don’t know where to start with translating your documents, here are some of the most common healthcare translation projects we do. While each organization can determine what documents they want to translate, there are six types of vital documents that your organization must translate. These documents include: Title IV requires these documents to be translated for any Limited English Proficiency (LEP) language group that constitutes 5% of the population or 1,000 people, whichever is less of the served population.   Health plans translate a variety of other documents for their member base. The most common documents health plans want to translate include: As a health plan, one of the best ways to start thinking about what documents you should translate is to ask yourself or your team: “What do our members need to know?” If your English-speaking members need the information you’re providing, your LEP members also need that information in an accessible format. Anything that contains vital information about coverage, benefits, providers, etc. should be added to your list of must-do healthcare translation projects. Hospitals, doctors offices, therapy offices, and plenty of other healthcare organizations also need to think about other documents they’ll need to translate. Some other common documents we receive translation requests for are: information you’re providing, your LEP members also need that information in an accessible format. Anything that contains vital information about coverage, benefits, providers, etc. should be added to your list of must-do healthcare translation projects.
Other Common Healthcare Translation Projects
Hospitals, doctors offices, therapy offices, and plenty of other healthcare organizations also need to think about other documents they’ll need to translate. Some other common documents we receive translation requests for are:
Medical notes, records, and reports
Medical diagnoses and documents
Medical devices and procedures
Clinical trial information
Medical history, physical health, and mental health questionnaires
This may seem like a lot of documents to consider as you’re putting together your Language Access Plan, but it all comes down to what your members or patients need to know. If the information is vital to your English-speaking members and patients, it’s also vital to your LEP members and patients. Giving your LEP members and patients documents that they can clearly understand increases patient satisfaction and decreases the risk of negative health outcomes. Fully understanding what documents must be translated for your LEP members and patients helps them and your organization.
If you’re still confused about where to start and what documents to translate, we’re happy to help! Call us today at 530-750-2040, or request a free quote. We can walk you through everything you need to know about healthcare translation projects!
 
 
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Although voting is a fundamental right in the United States, people with disabilities face many issues at polling places, despite there being ADA voting rights to protect them. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) sets requirements for polling places to ensure that people with disabilities can vote. These ADA voting rights cover many topics, including alternate formats of voting materials to physical space requirements. States can set their own laws addressing the mental capacity of voters. People who have developmental disabilities may find themselves challenged at their polling place. However, a person must be proven mentally incapable in a court for their voting rights to be taken away. This decision cannot be made by the polling place itself. So long as a court has not deemed the person with developmental disabilities to be incompetent, they have the right to vote, and the polling place must accommodate them. For federal elections, ADA voting rights require that voting systems must be accessible to all citizens, including those with impaired vision. Additionally, ADA voting rights demand that people with disabilities receive reasonable accommodations at other state and local elections. In the case of federal elections, those with impaired vision must receive a direct reading electronic system or another system of comparable quality. In the case of other elections, communication between election staff and people with disabilities must be as effective as the staff’s communication with people who do not have disabilities. This means that at every stage of the voting process from registration to casting the ballot, auxiliary aids must be available to those who need them. These auxiliary aids can include providing a dedicated reader or offering alternate formats of the ballot such as large text or braille. Polling places must also be physically accessible to people with disabilities that impact their mobility. People in wheelchairs must be able to physically enter the polling place and also approach a voting machine, or there must be a reasonable accommodation to allow people with limited mobility to vote. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities are granted reasonable accommodation if they cannot vote alone. This can include having a family member, friend, or staff at the polling place assist them. Assistance can range from help using the voting system to an explanation of the voting process and instructions in plain language. This requirement is part of every step of the voting process as well. If a person with a disability needs assistance to register to vote, it is legally required that they receive that assistance. The ADA very clearly stands against the discrimination of people with disabilities. ADA voting rights state that any public entity with a policy or procedure that could prevent people with disabilities from voting must immediately change their policy or procedure. Any available accommodations that can be reasonably acquired for people with disabilities should be given. This includes allowing service animals into polling places, providing chairs for people who cannot stand for long periods of time, and allowing those with temperature intolerance to wait inside before voting ADA voting rights protect people with disabilities from having their fundamental right to participate in democracy revoked. There are third-parties that can help you ensure that your polling place meets all ADA requirements. If you want to learn more about providing alternative document formats at your polling place, call us today at 530-7502040 or request a free quote.

Including social media translation in your digital marketing efforts can extend your reach to audiences who are not native English speakers. However, social media translation presents a variety of challenges as well and can be a complicated task. When your audience is global, how should you approach social media translation? Should you translate each individual message? What strategy should you follow to make sure your audiences can engage with your messaging? If your company seeks to engage audiences who speak languages other than English, these are the things you need to consider when posting to social media. If your audience is global, you want them to understand your messaging in their native language. There are many different aspects to consider when translating brand terms. First and foremost, you should consider localizing your brand name. Localization is the process of taking a word, or series of words, and adjusting them so they make linguistic sense in a different culture. If your brand name doesn’t translate easily into another language, localization can make it so the name translates correctly. This allows you to better connect with your global audiences, as your brand messaging will be culturally aware due to social media translation and localization. Another factor to consider is if your industry terms effectively translate into other languages. To ensure your audiences can engage with your social media messaging, your industry terms also need to go through social media translation and localization. If you have a global audience for your business’ social media pages, you’ll need to consider your options regarding social media translation. There are a few options when it comes to your social media pages. If you have a breakdown of what languages your audiences speak and it isn’t a large list, you may consider creating a different social media profile for each language. To effectively accomplish this, you’ll need to hire a Language Services Provider who can effectively accomplish your social media translation goals, or you can hire a social media manager for each language. This will be dependent on the size of your company, and how much time and money you have to dedicate to social media translation. Using bilingual employees can come with its own risks though, so be careful to evaluate the risks and benefits before beginning your social media translation project. Alternatively, you can post your social media messaging in multiple languages. Facebook includes a feature that allows you to post your messages in multiple languages. On other social media platforms, you can repost your message in your alternate languages. This form of social media translation will allow you to keep all of your social media marketing attached to one page, which will allow you to better track your analytics when it comes time to do so. However, you’ll need to consider if this is the best way to reach your audiences. Will your global audience respond better to a page in each native language, or will they respond better to translated messaging on a single social profile? That’s for you to determine as you start your social media translation project. Finally, you can set each of your social media profiles to automatically translate dependent on the user’s location. If someone from a Spanish-speaking area accesses your social profiles, your messaging will automatically translate into Spanish. This option relies on machine translation, which is not always accurate. If you want to effectively reach your global audience, this could be a dangerous method of trying to do so, due to the errors machine translation produces in translated messages. The most important element to consider as you go into a social media translation project is your core message. Your translated messages do not need to read exactly the same — you’re simply trying to get your original message across. Use language to which your global audiences are accustomed. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to create content that is easy to localize and will allow you to reach your global audience in a way that simply translating your message won’t. If you create content that’s easy to localize, and you’re aware of your core message, you won’t struggle nearly as much with your social media translation project. To create content that is easy to translate and localize, avoid using idioms, sarcasm, and location-specific jokes. If you do want to use these, you’ll need to spend more resources translating and localizing your social media messaging to ensure that your global audiences connect with and understand your core messaging. While social media translation can be overwhelming, the right LSP can help you to effectively implement a strategy for your social media translation projects. To learn more about how an LSP like Avantpage can help you translate your social media messaging, call us today at 530-750-2040, or request a free quote.

At some point in your life, you may have used a translation app that used the web to translate words and phrases quickly. Some translation apps will translate the text in a photo. Some apps allow you to speak into your microphone and then will translate your message into your chosen language. Some are more simple and translate text based on what you input into the app. The technology behind these applications is Machine Translation, also known as MT. While MT has come a long way since its inception, it’s still not perfect. In many cases, MT makes mistakes that human translators wouldn’t. Here are five reasons that translation apps aren’t effective at translating all different types of content. Machine Translation can’t understand context. If you’re speaking to another person, he or she can understand what words you’re replacing with pronouns, whereas MT is not yet able to do that. Similarly, people can understand what you mean when you say things like “Yes, but no. I mean, yes and no...I don’t know it’s really complicated.” That’s a very complicated series of sentences that are all related to one another. A piece of technology is not likely to realize that these statements are all connected, or that you’re talking about a subject that isn’t in these sentences. Translation apps aren’t known for producing high-quality translations. Many translation apps request user feedback to create better translations, but users submit many different ways to translate the same content. Again, what’s missing is context. To have an accurate, high-quality translation, you need to know why the document is being translated and to whom the materials will be delivered. Translation apps, even with user-submitted translations, cannot determine the context of your document. As a result, using a translation app will prevent you from having a high-quality translation of your document. Part of finding the right  Language Service Provider (LSP) is making sure it can keep your confidential data safe. LSP’s host their servers in secure data centers, and have procedures to ensure protected information is encrypted. Translation apps don’t provide this level of safety. These apps often store data after you submit it. If you’re translating information that is confidential in any manner, you should use a human translator to ensure the information stays protected. If you think you can use a translation app and have your LSP edit and proof the text afterward to save money, you may be surprised. The inaccurate translations provided by translation apps can take more time and can be more expensive to edit than translating the original text. While it may seem beneficial to provide pre-translated text, if it isn’t a quality pre-translation, it will take more time and money to determine what the translation should say. The best way to keep your budget low and keep your translation project on-time is to use human translators, and avoid pre-translating your text. Machine Translation is still being researched and improved, and therefore it still experiences inaccuracies. If you don’t know the language you’re translating to, you may end up with a translation fail rather than a usable message. Your consumers won’t receive or discuss your message if it’s inaccurately translated— all they’ll be talking about is the poor translation. If you want high-quality, confidential, accurate translations—translation apps won’t work for you. You need a dedicated LSP to ensure that your translations give you everything you need. If you’re interested in learning more about using an LSP, call us today at (530) 750-2040, or request a free quote.

Translation services have more impact than you may realize. From translating election ballots to translating healthcare documents, these services provide access to vital information for Limited English Proficient populations. However, the need for mental healthcare translation services is not discussed as often. More and more, people are discussing mental health in public forums, such as social media, and normalizing what used to be a taboo topic. As a result, seeking mental healthcare is becoming more commonplace. We are beginning to recognize that mental health is as important as physical health when it comes to healthcare. With this recognition, it’s also important to identify how to improve the efficacy of mental healthcare through mental healthcare translation services. Translation services make documents more accessible to Limited English Proficient consumers in any industry. To actively and successfully support those who need mental health services, healthcare organizations need to reach LEP individuals in their native language. If your healthcare organization’s patient demographics include those with native languages other than English, translating your documents will help you effectively reach and serve these individuals. Millions of migrants flee their countries every year in search of a new home where they are safe and free from persecution. These migrants have been through varying traumatic experiences, from leaving the places they grew up to violent acts being perpetrated against them. These people need mental health services, but may not be able to access them in English. Reaching this population requires high-quality, culturally sensitive translation services. A person’s culture impacts how likely they are to accept mental health services. Studies show that individuals are more likely to accept mental health services if it is deemed “culturally appropriate” to do so in their community. One way to improve cultural acceptance of mental health services is translation. If you reach Limited English Proficient communities in their native language with culturally sensitive information, they’re more likely to seek mental health services when they need them. Advocating for the continued acceptance of mental healthcare is a big task. Translating the messages you use for advocacy helps you to be a better advocate. You will reach a broader audience and improve the public image of your advocacy. Mental healthcare translation services allow more people to engage with your message and increase the likelihood that they will positively receive the message as well. If you face the public with information that is accessible to all people, your message will spread faster and more effectively. If you’re interested in learning more about how translation services benefit mental health professionals, call us today at (530) 750-2040, or request a free quote.

Much of the news you’ve read in the past two weeks has probably concerned the issue of immigration. The detention of immigrant children, coupled with the upholding of the travel ban by the Supreme Court, has lead to incredibly distressing headlines. If you’re anything like the team at Avantpage, you may be wondering what you can do to support immigrants who are dealing with the consequences of these horrific actions. To help you make a difference, we’ve created a list of ways you can help these people who are only trying to pursue better, safer lives than those they have in their home countries. No matter your bandwidth, you can find something on this list that you can do to support immigrants.   Many immigrant-centered organizations are nonprofit and need monetary donations to continue the work they do. Here are some organizations you can donate to and support with your dollars: Many immigrant-focused organizations rely on volunteers to effectively support immigrant communities. These organizations typically need interpreters and legal professionals. On June 30, 2018, hundreds of thousands of people around the country marched to show support for immigrants and protest the separation of children from their parents. While this particular march has happened, there are many throughout the rest of the year that allow you to show support for immigrants. You can stay up-to-date on upcoming events through this link. Let the people who represent your area know that you will not stand for the separation of children from their families, and you will not stand for the mistreatment of immigrants as a whole. Standing up for immigrants can be as simple as publicly showing your support. Use social media posts to show your support. Write letters to immigrants. Join local activist groups. Start the hard conversations about immigration that need to be had. If you see someone harassing an immigrant, stop them, educate them. Stand up for your fellow human beings. There are many opportunities to get involved with helping immigrants in this time of dire need. Support those among us who are trying valiantly to find better lives than those they are leaving, support immigrants in any way you can. If you have alternate ideas, leave us a comment and we’ll add them to this list. Remember, we are a nation founded by immigrants. Without immigration, not a single one of us would be in the positions we are today. For more on immigration, how we support immigrants, and how you can support immigrants, read some of our other blog posts: Watch These 3 Powerful TED Talks About Immigration
Here’s One Way to Celebrate Immigrant Heritage Month
Celebrate Immigrant Heritage Month and Tell Your Story
Your Guide to 4 Organizations Impacting Immigration in a Big Way

June is Immigrant Heritage Month in the United States. This is a time to celebrate being a nation founded by immigrants, and reflect on the nature of immigration and the stories we share about it. At Avantpage, we believe all immigrants deserve the ability to reach their American dream. Our team of employees is international, and many have stories about being immigrants or being the loved one of an immigrant. Sharing these immigration stories promotes visibility and open-mindedness, and there’s no better time to share them than during Immigrant Heritage Month. Here are some of the lessons our employees have learned by being an immigrant, or from those around them who are immigrants. Juliana was born in Colombia, immigrated to Canada for five years, and now lives in Mexico City. While it was challenging for her to leave her home country, especially with the long, harsh winters in Canada, she’s learned great lessons from being an immigrant. Her biggest joy in being an immigrant is getting to learn about new cultures, experiencing new people, and learning about how they live. The biggest lessons she’s taken away from her experiences is to appreciate her own culture and to find strength in being independent and taking care of herself. Vera immigrated from the Netherlands to Mexico. After participating in an exchange program in Mexico for school, she decided to indefinitely relocate to Mexico to pursue employment and perfect her Spanish. While she says her immigration went relatively smoothly, as she immediately found an employer willing to sponsor her in the visa application process, she found the paperwork and the bureaucracy to be the most challenging aspects of immigrating. She stressed that being an immigrant has allowed her to understand other cultures, and motivated her to reach for high levels of success. One of her biggest takeaways about being an immigrant is that no place is perfect; she works to enjoy the positive aspects of where she is and adapt to the local culture. Monika immigrated from Poland to Mexico. She originally intended to stay for only one year on a scholarship for school, but remained in Mexico City for an additional year and a half. While the process of immigrating for her went smoothly, she said it took quite a lot of time. She had to first obtain a visa, then a student card, then she went through the process of finding an employer to sponsor her work visa. Her biggest challenge as an immigrant was navigating cultural differences. She felt like she was always being treated as a tourist, and had to learn how to navigate new public transport systems and healthcare systems. Even though Mexico became a home to her, she struggled with feeling like nowhere was really “home.” While this was all challenging, she notes that it gave her an appreciation of her own culture that she did not have before. The experience also gave her a new view of herself, how adaptable she can be, and the internal strength she has. We’re sharing our employees' stories for Immigrant Heritage Month on our social media channels. Check out our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages to learn more about the immigrants on our team, and get more information on how we support immigrants striving to reach their American dream. For more on immigration, and how we support immigrants, read some of our other blog posts: Watch These 3 Powerful TED Talks About Immigration
Your Guide to 4 Organizations Impacting Immigration in a Big Way
My Immigrant Story – A Letter From Luis Miguel, CEO at Avantpage

When you start working with a new Language Service Provider (LSP), it’s normal to have questions about data safety. Working with an LSP frequently means transmitting data that is confidential or protected. How can you be sure that your data is secure during transmission and in storage? The security of your information and your client’s information is a high concern for you and your LSP. At Avantpage, we follow best practices for data safety. Here’s what you should be looking for regarding data safety from any LSP. When you’re working with an LSP, one data safety concern is file protection, which is a multi-tiered concept. Your LSP’s servers should be top-of-the-line and hosted in a secure data center. Without this, any further encryption won’t be effective. Software and hardware firewalls should be implemented as well. These will prevent unauthorized access to the servers hosting your data. Finally, file level encryption should be implemented. If someone circumvented the software and hardware firewalls, file level encryption would prevent them from reading files on the server. At Avantpage, we host our servers in one of the most prominent data centers in the United States. Because we handle daily requests for translation of Protected Health Information (PHI), we follow all the above recommendations for data safety. The confidentiality of your data is maintained with firewalls, encryption, and secure servers. Because of these security measures, we’ve never experienced a data breach. To maintain data safety, your LSP needs to have trustworthy translators. There are many ways to go about hiring trustworthy translators. Our translators at Avantpage go through a rigorous qualification process to determine their translation quality and their professional conduct. Once they’ve been selected, they sign a variety of documents including a non-disclosure agreement, a formal HIPAA Business Associate contract, and our Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility.   An additional consideration for translators is ensuring they have a secure connection, as well as private space to work on translation projects. All communications with our translators go over encrypted SSL channels to ensure data safety. Access to translation files goes through an encrypted SSL channel, as well as second step authentication. We closely monitor the translators we choose to give PHI and/or other confidential information. When necessary, check-in points are set up with these translators to ensure they are maintaining our standards of confidentiality. Your LSP needs to have an encrypted system for hosting translation projects, having translators work on those projects, and delivering those projects back to you. It should be password protected and use a secure connection for transmitting the data to each project participant. We use AvantFlow to ensure your data is safe and transmitted securely. Our system is password protected with second-step authentication and uses SSL data transmission protocols. The system automatically encrypts any information sent through it, providing you with ease of mind. Your data safety is important, and your LSP should treat it that way. If you’d like to learn more about our data safety protocols at Avantpage, give us a call at 530-750-2040.

The language communities of your state impact how you think about translation projects. Looking toward elections season, it’s particularly important to identify the language communities that you serve. This can help you comply with legal regulations and engage more voters, which can lead to increased turnout and support. Florida has many unique language communities, each with its own needs for translation and communication. Here are five facts about Florida language communities that you should consider going into this election season. This piece of  2015 Census data shows that there are an incredible amount of languages and a wide variety of cultures to consider when working on a translation project. Almost three million people in the Miami metropolitan area alone are bilingual or multilingual. These facts emphasize the importance of being culturally aware when translating election materials. With such a large population speaking so many different languages, it’s important to maintain cultural sensitivity for each language community. This will help to engage voters more actively in the democratic process. While most people are aware of the active Spanish and Creole communities in Florida, few people know of the French community. As of 2017, 114,000 people speak French in their Florida homes. With French being such a pervasive language in Florida, it’s important to consider the needs of this language community when translating election materials. There are many French dialects, so you’ll need to research which dialects people speak in your area. Reaching these voters in their native or chosen language of French will help you build a trusting relationship. This may not seem like a high percentage, but it is significant! If you don’t have a strategy to reach LEP voters, now is the time to develop one. LEP voters have specific translation and communication needs. To reach LEP voters, focus on what they want to hear about, and consider how you can deliver those messages. If you need a starting point for strategizing, these four questions can help you reach LEP voters! Florida’s language communities are more varied than you might think. In 2013, 86,000 people spoke Portuguese, 70,000 people spoke German, 60,000 people spoke Vietnamese, and 58,000 people spoke Chinese. When you’re translating election material, be sure to research which communities are prevalent in your area. If you find that a portion of your community’s population speaks one or more of these languages, plan to translate accordingly. There are two federally recognized Native American tribes in Florida, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. There are also three other tribes in Florida, the Muscogee Nation of Florida, the Perdido Bay Tribe of Lower Muscogee Creeks, and the Choctaw Nation of Florida. When translating election materials, make sure to reach these tribes effectively. Consider if the messaging and language speaks to the concerns and culture of these communities. Your voter turnout rates can increase as a result. With such diverse language communities, it’s important for Florida elections professionals to strategize and plan translation projects effectively. If you don’t know where to start, give us a call at 530-750-2040, or request a free quote today!

Starting your work with a Language Service Provider can be intimidating. There are many factors to consider when you choose an LSP, one being how your LSP measures and assures quality. At Avantpage, we consider more than 40 pieces of information to ensure you get a high-quality translation that serves you and your consumers. Each piece of data helps us to better contextualize your translation needs. While each project may not have all 40 pieces to consider, we always look for the following five pieces of information as part of our five-item quality checklist. These pieces of information provide the main context of your document and allow us to produce the highest quality translation of your document. To provide the highest-quality translation, we need to know how you plan on using the document. If your document is being printed, your translation may look different than if it is being used to make an audio recording. The function of the document helps us to communicate your message in the best way. Another piece of information we consider is the purpose of your document. What are you trying to do with the final product? For example, are you obtaining information from your end-user, or giving them information? We want to ensure your document continues to serve this purpose, even after translation. Who will receive the final translation? Your end-user is one of our biggest considerations in assuring a high-quality translation. The document will read differently if your end-user is from an area with a specific dialect of your language, or if they are in a certain life stage. Your industry, or domain, informs how we translate your document. A high-quality translation for the healthcare industry might include different terms and phrases than a high-quality translation for the elections industry. To make sure we’re using the language that your consumers expect, your industry is a key point in our contextualization process. Finally, we need to know what kind of document you need translated! If your project involves translating a letter to your end-users, it will read differently than if your project involves translating meeting minutes. This helps us make sure the tone of your translation fits the document you’re providing. Above all else, we work to ensure that the translation you receive from us is of the highest quality possible. To do so, we spend time contextualizing the document before translating it. Your translation needs are our highest priority, and we treat each project with the time and consideration it deserves. To find out more about our translation services, and our quality review processes, contact us at 530-750-2040 or request a free quote today.

With more machine translation services online, it’s natural that you may want to plug your translation project into an online system. After all, the process seems quicker, easier, and less expensive than hiring a Language Service Provider. However, the results can be misguided at best and dismal at worst. While there is a lot to be said about how far machine translation services have come and how much they have to offer, they still produce translation errors. These errors can stem from a lack of cultural understanding to simply mistranslating the grammar conventions accurately into another language. With that said, sometimes the Avantpage Team comes across machine translation errors that we can’t help but share. Here is a selection of our favorite mistranslations from around the web. This informational message makes perfect sense when read in Italian, but something got lost in its translation to English. The original message in Italian is “For a proper service, please turn on the exhaust fan when using the shower. Thank you.” That makes much more sense than turning on the vacuum! While the English text is an excellent reminder to be loving, it’s quite a departure from the original text’s meaning. The two other languages on the sign, Japanese and Chinese, state “Please take care of the plants.” While this translation fail is more minor than the others, it’s still notable! The original Spanish text says “It is forbidden to throw ANYTHING down the toilet.” The translation and the original text are complete opposites. It’s no wonder how this could get confusing! Another minor translation fail, the original text in Russian means “staff only,” rather than the translated English which says “stuff only.” Even the smallest of translation errors can create big problems! Finally, in recent events, these Olympic Chefs accidentally ordered 15,000 eggs! These Olympic Chefs from Norway were trying to ensure they could keep the Norwegian  Olympic Athletes well-fed, but ended up with enough eggs to feed ten times the amount of athletes! They wanted to order 1,500 eggs from a local grocery store but accidentally ordered 15,000 after using Google Translate to help them make the order. No matter what you’re using machine translation services for, you don’t want to end up with errors like these. To learn more about how we at Avantpage can prevent these kinds of translation errors from happening, contact us today! We will ensure the accuracy of your translation project, so you’ll have nothing to worry about! At Avantpage our experienced team can help guide you through the translation process and make it fast and easy. To find out more about our services call us at 530-750-2040 x11 or request a free quote.