Setting up Translation Advisory Committees

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s language access measures, you may want to consider leveraging an advisory board that specializes in language access and accessibility. Advisory boards can play a helpful role in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your organization’s language access measures (or lack thereof) and provide actionable insights into improving services for limited English proficient individuals.

Whether you work for a federal government agency or an election office in a small town, it’s quite likely that your work impacts individuals with limited English proficiency (LEP). An advisory board that specializes in matters of language access can help you identify ways in which your organization can better serve those individuals.
 
These groups can play an invaluable role in monitoring and improving your language access efforts, as they take a look at the bigger picture to point out weak spots that you may not notice when you’re focused on the day-to-day aspects of your work. They can also provide answers to any specific questions you might have and serve as a great way to crowdsource community members and find community leaders.
 
Advisory boards come in all shapes and sizes — essentially, they consist of a group of specialists and stakeholders who meet regularly to develop solutions to problems that a community might face. These can include language service professionals like translators and interpreters, but an effective advisory board will incorporate a broad range of perspectives: recruiting community leaders, individuals with LEP, and others who are impacted by your services will ensure that you have a wide range of viewpoints to develop an innovative solution.
 
There are plenty of advisory boards that focus on language matters already — for instance, the US Election Assistance Commission’s Language Access Roundtable convenes regularly to “discuss topics and resources available to election officials as they serve language minority voters.”
 
While it’s possible to join an already existing advisory board, you should also consider taking the time to set one up specifically for your organization or industry. This way, you can tailor the advisory board to your organization’s unique needs. In this blog post, we’ll show you how you can set up your own language access advisory board to set you up for success.

4 Steps to Setting Up Your Advisory Board

Starting up your own advisory board can be a daunting task. If you’re not sure where to begin, we’ve broken the process down into four simple steps that will help you get started:

1. Conduct research on existing advisory boards

There are plenty of other advisory boards that focus on language-related issues already. Take some time to gather basic information on these advisory boards — look at their members and their experience, as well as their bylaws and meeting minutes if they’re publicly available. This will give you a better idea of what kinds of people to seek out when inviting different community members and stakeholders to join your advisory board.
 
This research should give you some inspiration for structuring your board and planning all the details out. A few examples of advisory boards you can look to in your research include the Language Access Collaborative in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Language Access Services Section of the National Center for State Courts. By getting familiar with the work that other advisory boards do, you can get a better sense of what you want yours to do for your organization.

2. Determine the focus of your board

After conducting research into and getting inspiration from other advisory boards, it’s time to narrow in on your own board. Start by determining the overarching goal of your advisory board — some common goals you might want to focus on include:

• Improving language access for individuals with LEP
• Enhancing general accessibility services, including ADA compliance
• Sourcing support for Indigenous languages in particular, which often have more limited resources than other widely spoken languages
• Building upon other diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives

3. Identify key members

Once you’ve figured out the scope of your advisory board, you can pin down the different experts and stakeholders you’ll need to serve on your board.
 
If improving language access is the focal point of your advisory board, you’ll want to focus your efforts on consulting with interpreters, translators, other language service experts, and multilingual community members who understand the needs of LEP individuals; on the other hand, if you’re focused more on diversity and equity as a whole, you’ll want to work with DEI specialists and the community members who use your services.
 

Advisory boards are most effective when they include a diverse group of voices — people who have LEP and community leaders should also play a key role in your advisory board.[3]  Make sure to target a wide range of prospective board members. You’ll want to get perspectives from the people who use your services, front of staff, buyers and requesters of services, industry leaders, and language-specific experts, just to name a few.

4. Make open calls and share widely

If you already have some stakeholders in mind, go ahead and invite them to join the board directly. But don’t stop there — cast a wide net by posting open calls to sign up on social media and ask others to share as well. In your outreach efforts, be sure to be clear about your goals in setting up the advisory board and what your expectations are. If you need some inspiration for your outreach efforts, take a look at this Linkedin post from the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, promoting their Language Assistance Advisory Committee.
 
Notice that the application in the Linkedin post above is very clear about the commitment level expected of council members. In your outreach efforts, be as clear as you possibly can — outline the frequency of meetings and, if possible, when and where the board’s meetings will take place.

Summary

Working with an advisory board is an excellent way to improve your organization’s language access services. And while there are many out there already, you may find that setting up your own advisory board allows you to gain more useful, custom-tailored insights into your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. Here are some simple steps to get started:

• Conduct research on existing advisory boards
• Determine the focus of your board
• Identify key stakeholders and specialists
• Make open calls and share widely

If you’re looking to improve your organization’s language access plan, Avantpage can help. We offer language access consulting services that help you expand your language services and adapt to evolving needs. Reach out to us today at [email protected] or (530) 750-2040 to learn more.

Reframed this as bullet points, rather than questions — I think it’s a little bit clearer now, but let me know what you think
Does “members” work better than “specialists and stakeholders” here?
Added a new sentence here, per previous comments