Blogs

Healthcare reform is one of today’s hot button medical topics –– from the water cooler to the boardroom, everyone’s talking about it, and everyone has a different idea of what’s in store. Let’s take a quick look at what’s going on as the 2014 deadline for implementation draws closer … First of all, healthcare reform (President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was established to address the health insurance needs of Americans as health care and medical costs continue to rise astronomically in this country. For a typical American family, the average premium is almost $14,000 dollars a year…and growing. Premiums have doubled over the last nine years, and indications are that they will continue to rise. As a result, many Americans do without health care, and that is no longer acceptable. Everyone deserves healthcare, and health care reform will make sure everyone gets it. In 2014, major changes to health care under the ACA include: expansion of Medicaid; health insurance tax credits for those who are eligible; the implementation of state-run Health Exchanges; and the mandate that everyone be required to buy health insurance, or pay a penalty. Also in accordance with the ACA, Insurers will no longer be able to exclude those who have pre-existing conditions, or charge sick people more for coverage. By 2019, it is estimated that 32 million Americans who are currently without health insurance will have it.  How will America pay for all this expanded health care coverage? Over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office has surmised that 938 billion dollars will be spent on health care reform.  The money will come from various sources:  savings from health care providers and insurers through Medicare; higher Medicare taxes for those who earn more; new taxes on insurers and businesses; cutting wasteful spending throughout the healthcare industry. Whether you support reform, would rather keep to the status quo, or fall somewhere in between, one thing is certain – this is the biggest overhaul of our nation’s health care system since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. To view an entertaining short video on this subject, please visit http://healthreform.kff.org/the-animation.aspx  Written and produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation, it is available to watch in English and Spanish.

Translation in Healthcare: As a Health Plan, What’s in it for You? We have a wonderful, informative new report on how our comprehensive translation in healthcare package works for your business. You know that translation plays a critical part in providing quality healthcare, but like many health plans, your organization may question how to best allocate resources and how to provide the highest-quality translations for the most reasonable costs. Download our Special Report now, where we address some of these questions and concerns, such as: “We Have Our Bilingual Employees Do Our Translations”, “I Don’t Know How to Get Started with the  Process”, “No One at Our Organization Has Time to Spearhead Translation Initiatives”, and more. Avantpage helps clarify the important role that thorough, accurate translation plays in providing comprehensive healthcare to California’s residents.  We lay out steps that help you avoid the misunderstandings, miscommunications and alienation of your LEP audience that, in the end, could cost your organization time and money to correct. About Us At Avantpage, we use only professional, certified translators with years of experience translating healthcare materials. We work with you to establish a budget you are comfortable with, and save you money whenever possible. Our high-quality translations ensure that the information conveyed to your non-English-speaking enrollees and potential enrollees is accurate, culturally sensitive, and presented at appropriate audience reading levels.

Choosing a translation provider you trust is critical to establishing effective communication with LEP audiences, ensuring that you meet state and federal regulatory guidelines regarding translation compliance, and creating marketing collateral, documentation and other written materials that convey your message accurately and appropriately in any language you choose. Our new brochure is ready for download now. In it, we provide an overview of Avantpage, our services, and our philosophy. Download now, and you’ll quickly discover who we are, what we do, and the many great services we offer our clients. Within these pages you’ll find introductions to our staff, descriptions of our suite of translation services, definitions, common translation FAQs –– in short, all the information you’ll need to make educated and informed decisions regarding choosing an LEP translation provider for your business. This brochure addresses our stringent translator selection and qualification guidelines; our step-by-step translation and quality assurance process; our commitment to superior customer service; common definitions including Glossaries, Style Guides, Translation Memory, DTP, Localization and more; and also covers our certifications, our translator code of ethics, and our proprietary project management tool, AvantFlow. Contact us today at [email protected] to learn more about how our resources can help you create a comprehensive, affordable translation strategy. You’ll be able to communicate more effectively with your clients, increase your market share, and secure new business.

Avantpage and School Innovations & Advocacy have partnered together for the 9^th year in order to deliver SARC (School Accountability Report Card) documents that accommodate multiple languages and are fully compliant with state and federal laws regarding translation of materials. SARCs represent a school’s opportunity to highlight the year’s success stories, generate community support and goodwill, provide information to the public, build support for upcoming bond legislation, and promote a positive outlook for the coming year. When 15% or more students enrolled in a particular school speak a single primary language other than English, all notices, reports, statements or records, including SARCs, must be communicated in that primary language in addition to being written in English.  Parents or guardians of these students may respond in either English or their primary language. Schools are responsible for posting their SARCs online if they have a website, and must make hard copies available to parents if requested. The deadline to complete and publish SARCs is February 1, and Avantpage has been working closely with SI&A, handling translation assignments for a variety of SARC projects in languages including Spanish, Hmong, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Khmer. Avantpage’s goal is to ensure that SARCs are communicated in a clear, accurate, and culturally sensitive manner. Avantpage and SI&A have worked together on many projects over the years, and SI&A remains one of our most valued long-term clients. Dr. Luis Miguel, CEO of Avantpage, says, “Avantpage is privileged to work with SI&A on the translation of these important documents, which keep California public schools, parents, and the community connected.” Since 1996, Avantpage has offered accurate, high-quality LEP (Limited English Proficient) translations for industries including Education, Medical/Healthcare, Elections, Financial, Government, Medicare Marketing, and more.

At Avantpage, our customers are our most important asset. Day in and day out, Avantpage translation professionals at every level of our organization strive to provide the exceptional customer service that has become a hallmark of our organization. Clear communication, commitment to our customers, prompt attention to details, issues and concerns –– it’s all part of our dedication to delivering quality, service and value. Our second annual Customer Service Survey has been completed, and once again respondents have provided us with valuable feedback we will use to determine where and how we can improve our services. Customer Satisfaction– Where Do We Stand? When asked about their level of satisfaction with Avantpage, 93% of respondents are satisfied with their level of service. When asked specifically which attributes generated the most satisfaction, respondents cited, in order, the quality of translations, turnaround time and responsiveness. AvantFlow – Convincing More Clients to Go With the “Flow”  The data indicates that the majority of our clients are not using AvantFlow, our free online project management tool. AvantFlow allows customers to request quotes, check project status, give detailed project instructions, upload source files, assign due dates, download files from previous projects and much more. Those who are using AvantFlow indicated that they are very happy with it, and so we would love to get more of our clients on board. To that end, we offer AvantFlow training, demos, information and more – just call for details! Recommendations One of the greatest compliments we receive is when we learn that a satisfied customer has recommended us to a friend or colleague. If a customer values Avantpage enough to recommend us to others, we must be doing something right! In our 2012 survey, 91% of respondents indicated that they were likely to recommend our services to other professionals. Where Do We Go From Here? We asked our survey respondents for their suggested improvements – we value our customers’ opinions and always try to incorporate their suggestions and comments into the fabric of our organization. We were immensely gratified at the positive feedback we received, including, “You guys are awesome!”; “Keep up the good work!”; “I am quite happy with your service”; “Staff are always kind, pleasant and eager to help”; “Had nothing but positive interactions with your company”; “In the past two years the customer service has been great, the turnaround time on requests has also been good, keep up the good work.” The 2012 Avantpage Customer Service Survey has provided us with critical information we will use to further improve our quality of service, our relationships, and the processes and procedures that drive our organization. We look forward to continuing a positive, mutually beneficial translation partnership with all of our valued customers.

The digital age is profoundly impacting society as we know it, but since we do translations best, let’s focus on the changes happening there! As consumerism’s voracity has sharpened, and people used to the exponential growth of technology start expecting faster turnaround times, corporations look for work that is cheaper, and faster. Machine translation has played a pivotal and controversial role in this trend, as well as translation glossaries and other extraordinary web/digital tools! Sensationalists and extremists on both sides wonder if the combination of the growing sophistication of non-human translation tools, and the increasing reluctance to hire translators who don’t use these tools to expedite their process will contribute to the end of the translation industry as we know it. We, at Avantpage, though, say ‘no!’ to those extremists. We’re reasonable and clear about our mission: to use our custom array of translation technology to its utmost potential without sacrificing the quality of the work. And the truth is for however much technology becomes able to do, there is never a full replacement for a human translator (especially ours!) using his or her unique sensibility and professionalism to do the job just right! We’re always giving you the product we know you’ll respond to and want to come back for, and we know how to keep the outflow of quality work streamlined with the optimal efficiency of machine/human collaboration! Have a wonderful 2013, translation!

At Avantpage, we often create Style Guides for our clients--whether they're for a healthcare, medical, Medicare marketing, election, or government industry. These language service style guides enable us to streamline and customize the translation process. Style Guides are manuals created to indicate linguistic and stylistic preferences for a specific client, and include an organization’s linguistic requirements, grammar, punctuation, acronyms, currency and numeric preferences, and more. Each guide we create is tailored to a client’s individual needs, preferences and requirements, and becomes a valuable reference tool for our translators. Style guides can include: Why Use Style Guides? When we work with our clients, style is one of those things that creates a good deal of back-and-forth effort, which can slow the translation process. Knowing in advance how to handle things like acronyms, grammatical preferences, punctuation, audience reading level/background, etc. allows us to work more quickly and accurately to tailor the translation pieces to individual client needs. Improved Efficiency, Consistency and Quality Style Guides encompass all of an organization’s written linguistic, tone and style preferences, providing a general framework and specifications for anyone who is involved in the translation projects. Style Guides ensure that every piece we translate for you matches your organization’s individual preferences and requirements. This results in improvement of translation quality and style consistency across all translation projects. Contact us today at [email protected] to learn more about how our resources can help you create a comprehensive, affordable translation strategy. You'll be able to communicate more effectively with your clients, increase your market share, and secure new business.

Recently, Altamed Health Services has been creating youtube videos to educate their patient populations and demographics about caring for individuals’ health responsibly. Part of this series included a telenovela style web-series, entitled “Sin Vergüenza” or “Without Shame,” focusing on issues of homosexuality, safe sex, HIV testing, and more. We’re really happy to have served Altamed by translating the script to this series (see English trailer here), and we’re inspired by their multifaceted, creative commitment to bettering the world through health. It’s always a joy to modulate the nuance of our work to fit the style of the original document and cater to the target audience, and we’re always staying on point to deliver the messages and themes as precisely as possible! Though we specialize in Healthcare translations, this is an example of blending that expertise with our expertise for dramatic script translations, and we get how all of our expertise can co-mingle to serve a greater whole in all our fields of work! Your language is our betterment, and we’re always eager to hear about what kinds of translations you want for your business or projects!

The BBC just posted a piece on all the languages one can discover in New York, but conversely all the ones that become extinct there! With a rich historical upbringing, NY was originally home to the indigenous Lenape people, then settled by the Dutch, then the English, and now is a hub to a myriad of diverse migrants! You may be amazed as an English-speaking American, at how many cultures and languages are just under your nose in the communities in which you live! In NY, it’s as simple as choosing a destination by subway, and then listening to the predominant non-English conversations on the train, or spying the prominent translated safety signs along your way! The reason languages die, according to anthropologists, is because of what’s called “language shift,” where a group of people consensually decide to change tongues, or simply must because of circumstantial pressure (such as being conquered). With over 6,000 languages in existence across the globe, and half of these on the verge of evaporation, it’s our duty as a language service business to know what’s going on in the world of languages, and promote awareness by offering expertise in these languages, as well as quality standards! Let us know what you think here at our blog!

Covered California–– California’s new Health Benefit Exchange –– represents a unique opportunity for health plan providers to increase market share and gain new customers … but timing will prove critical. When Covered California goes into effect (January 2014, with pre-enrollment beginning October 2013), thousands of consumers and small businesses will be newly eligible to purchase health insurance. This pool of newly eligible consumers will be largely LEP (Limited English Proficient), which means that health plan providers must have a solid translation strategy in place before Covered California goes “live.” What do these LEP customers want as they shop for coverage through Covered California? They need to understand benefits information; compare plan offerings; and make educated choices regarding costs, benefit options, quality, value and more. Click here to read our Special Report: "Covered California - Claiming Your Share of the Health Benefit Exchange" - which explains the Health Benefit Exchange, how providers should plan to stay ahead of the game, and the five steps health plans can take now to get started. At Avantpage, we specialize in translation for the healthcare industry and work closely with a variety of healthcare organizations, including CalOptima, Delta Dental, Alameda Alliance for Health, MESVision, California Department of Public Health, EyeMed Vision Care and more. Contact us today to create a comprehensive, affordable translation strategy that will help you communicate more effectively with your clients, increase your market share, and secure new business.

Thanksgiving is always a fantastic opportunity to spend time with friends and family, we as a business are thankful for that! The language industry this year has had a lot of exciting new developments, so we wanted to point out our favorite trends and let you in on our gratitude list! We at Avantpage are thankful for you! Make your voice heard with us by leaving a comment on our blog! May the good energy of turkey dinners be with you!

On November 11th earlier this month, Rolling Stone Magazine introduced its first Spanish language section into its pages focusing on Latino music and culture!¹ The back of the issue is a secondary cover featuring the crossover rapper Pitbull.
According to the publisher, 17% of the magazine’s readership are Latinos, making the new feature not only more accessible to Latino Americans, but also more resonant with the cultural and artistic crossovers we’re experiencing between Latin America and the U.S.!
It’s great for us at Avantpage to see these changes in a major magazine read by the mainstream, since it acknowledges not only the growing presence of Latinos in the U.S., but also the growing influence that presence is having on our nation, both artistically and culturally.
The truth is America is an extremely diverse place, with the example of rapper Pitbull being raised by Cuban parents in Miami, FL, and bringing not only his language but his culture into the American music scene.
Knowing other languages is a proven health benefit to the brain,² so it’s wonderful to see moments when the media or mainstream makes room for different languages in their output, not diluting their English content in doing so, but diversifying their message and making their subject matter broader, their content more flavorful!