Government contractor continues to humiliate U.S. interpreters.

Dear Colleagues:

It has been about two months since some of our colleagues, for their own very personal reasons, decided to negotiate and enter into a professional services contract with SOSi, and agency part of a bigger operation that was temporarily awarded the contract, for a one-year base period that could be extended, to provide interpreting services at all courthouses and hearings involving the United States Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) better known as the Immigration Court.

For several days now, I have been listening to many colleagues who are now interpreting EOIR hearings all over the United States after signing a contract with SOSi, and the list of negative comments and complaints about the performance of this Defense Department contractor turned language services provider is appalling.

Although I would have never entered into a contract with SOSi after learning everything we found out about this company and its business model over the last few months, and I applaud those colleagues who decided to stay away from this folks, we cannot abandon our colleagues who decided to give this contractor a chance.  We have to defend our profession.

After reading emails, messages, personally speaking to colleagues, and talking over the phone, I heard the same terrible stories over and over again. They are unconscionable, but it is more disturbing the disclosure by some colleagues, in confidence and under the condition of anonymity, that they have been warned by this contractor’s agents not to speak ill of the company or suffer the consequences. I was told that this was a reason, at least In part, why some interpreters, very few compared to the ones who are vociferously complaining by the way, are praising SOSi and its practices.  I am not saying that some interpreters, perhaps in a certain area of the country, did not receive everything they claim they got from the defense contractor. In these cases some people often get everything they rightfully deserve.

When I heard of these allegations I decided to make a list of the most common “occurrences”, and I decided to read more on the company to see if there was some link between everything the interpreters are saying and the company’s business policy.  The first thing I came across was an interview with Julian Setian, CEO of SOS from September 18, 2014 by Lauren Budik of the “Washington Exec” when he was nominated for the “Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards” as “Executive of the Year” in the 75 million to 300 million dollar category. Although the interview is softball and self-serving as most of these “awards” interviews tend to be, there was an answer to one on the questions that it thought was very telling about the philosophy of the new temporary EOIR contractor. To the question: “What are the largest challenges that you predict your business will face in the next five years?” Setian’s answer was: “The biggest challenge in the next five years remains the most obvious… decreased U.S. spending and price pressure in the U.S. government contractor market. Regardless of strategy, that is a reality that everyone in our industry has to contend with…”  In other words, SOSi won the award because of their determination to be more frugal than the rest.  This could explain the low fees, late and incomplete payments, and all other monetary irregularities our fellow interpreters are suffering. (http://www.washingtonexec.com/2014/09/julian-setian-sos-international-llc-talks-2014-govcon-awards-nomination/)

I also found some very interesting statement by SOSi employees on the website indeed.com

One former employee from Reston, Virginia, states: “…I can not (sic) recommend this company… the senior leadership churns through managers in every department and the turnover is very high with each manager lasting an average of 1 year. This is due to the ineffective top leadership… before considering a position with this company it is advisable to talk to past as well as present employees… and research their (SOSi’s) reputation… by talking to teaming partners, former customers, etc…” A former instrument technician from Marietta, Georgia, stated that there was “… no room for advancement… not treated with respect at all… good old boy system…” (http://www.indeed.com/cmp/Sosi/reviews?fcountry=US)  There are many “good reviews” on this site, but the comments above explain, at least in part, the way so many interpreters apparently have been ignored and mistreated by SOSi during these first months of the contract.

Dear colleagues, we are on a permanent campaign to raise awareness of our profession, to protect our status as professionals, not laborers, and to defend professional appropriate working conditions needed for us to do our very complex and demanding work. It is for this reason, and because this contractor is still on its “probationary period” of one year, that we should consider very carefully if it is desirable to keep them there for the rest of the decade. If the answer to this question is no, we need to make sure that the U.S. government and the private bar know of these irregularities and help us decide to terminate the contractual relationship with SOSi once the 1-year base period expires.

Among the many complaints and negative comments about SOSi that have come to me, the following are the most frequent and widely present throughout the country:

• They do not pay on time, apparently in violation of the contractual obligation
• Many payments are partial instead of covering the total fee amount on the COI statement, apparently in violation of the contractual obligation
• When this defense contractor pays the interpreter, many times they electronically deposit a lump sum without any reference to the services been paid, making the interpreter’s bookkeeping impossible or at least confusing, apparently all due to lack of due diligence on the part of the contractor.
• SOSi does not have an accounting system needed for an operation of this size with the United States government. For this reason, the filing of invoices by interpreters are not acknowledged, and quite a few interpreters are being paid a fee lower than the one contractually agreed by the parties, apparently in violation of the contractual obligation.
• This temporary EOIR contractor is not reimbursing interpreters for travel expenses, and it has denied payment in cases when the hearing does not take place and the interpreter is already present at the courthouse of destination, apparently in violation of the contractual obligation.
• On repeated occasions, SOSi’s designated “payment processing” individuals are not fluent in English, and appear to ignore the policy and process to handle payment inquiries.
• Many interpreters have found it extremely difficult to speak to a contractor’s representative to iron out all of these issues, and many times their messages go unanswered.
• The contractor is attempting to run this very complex scheduling process nationwide without having any software to do it. Apparently they are using an Excel sheet just like any mom and pop’s business would do.

These irregularities are creating an environment where many interpreters are seriously considering rejecting all new cases, and in those areas where they are already declining assignments, immigration courts are developing a backlog due to the many cases that must be continued due to the lack of interpreters, and many cases that are heard by an immigration judge have to wait for a long time before one of the few contract interpreters who continue to work with no pay is free to attend that courtroom.

If you are a current immigration court interpreter under the SOSi contract, if you are an immigration court interpreter who did not have the stomach to deal with these individuals (bravo!) and decided to provide interpreting services somewhere else, or if you are an interpreter, not even a court interpreter, just a professional colleague, and your blood boils when you read about the way our current immigration court interpreter colleagues are being humiliated, directly by this defense contractor turned language service provider, and indirectly by the EOIR that apparently could not care less, I invite you to share this information with your colleagues, local media, social media, professional associations, attorneys’ bars and professional associations’ local chapters, like the American Bar Association (ABA) the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the National Immigration Forum, as well as your responsible, honest, caring local immigration judges (there is at least one everywhere and you should know who they are). I also invite you to share any ideas you may have that could eventually help our colleagues who are presently on a very bad situation, as many of them have not received any, or very little, income for quite some time.

Improving our knowledge, enhancing our skills in the New Year.

Dear Colleagues:

Many professional responsibilities and obligations come with a new year.  As interpreters and translators we must strive to deliver a better service than the year before, and the best way to achieve it is through practice and study.  We need to improve our personal libraries, increase our professional resources, and find a way to learn something new and brush up on our ethics, while getting the continuing education credits needed to keep our certifications, patents or licenses.

This is the time of the year when we plan some of the major events that will happen during the year; the time to block some dates on our professional appointment books to be able to attend professional conferences. Those of you who have read the blog for a long time know that every year I share with you those professional conferences that I consider “a must” due to their content, the reputation of the organizations behind them, and the networking benefits derived from attending the event. This year is no exception.

As always, I start my conference “grocery list” by writing down the characteristics that I consider essential for my professional development. This way I make sure that I will not end up at a conference that will take my money and give me little, or nothing, in exchange.

The right conference needs to offer useful and practical presentations geared to different segments of professional interpreters and translators according to their years of practice.  There is nothing more confusing to a new interpreter or translator than finding themselves in the middle of a big conference where nothing in the program appeals to them.  There have to be workshops and presentations that speak to the new blood, and help them become good and sound interpreters and translators who will enjoy their professional lives.  By the same token, we must have workshops that appeal to the experienced professional. There are hundreds of colleagues who stay away from professional conferences because all they see in the program is very basic.  They want advanced skills workshops, advanced level presentations, interesting innovative topics on interpreting, translating and languages, instead of the same old seminars that focus on the newcomers and completely ignore the already-established interpreter and translator.  Finally, a good conference has to offer presentations and workshops on technology, the business of interpreting and translation from the perspective of the professional individual, instead of the corporate view that so often permeates the conferences in the United States and so many other countries, and it must include panels and forums on how we should proactively take action, and reactively defend, from the constant attacks by some of the other players in our field: agencies, government entities, direct clients, misguided interpreters and translators, and so on.

To me, it is not a good option to attend a conference, which will cost me money, to hear the same basic stuff directed to the new interpreters and translators. We need conferences that offer advanced-level content for interpreters and translators, forums and presentations that deal with sophisticated ethical and legal situations that we face in our professions.  At the same time, the new colleagues need to be exposed to these topics on a beginner-level format, and they need to learn of the difficult ethical and legal situations they will eventually face as part of their professional practice.

I do not think that a good conference should include presentations by multilingual agencies or government speakers who, under the color of “good practices to get more business”, use these professional forums, with the organizing professional association’s blessing (because money talks), to indoctrinate new colleagues, and also veterans of feeble mind, on the right way to become a “yes man” or “yes woman” and do everything needed to please the agency or government entity in order to keep the contract or the assignment, even when this means precarious working conditions, rock-bottom fees, and humiliating practices that step by step chip away the pride and professional will of the “linguist” (as they often call them) and turn him into little more than a serf with no will of his own.  I want to make clear that I am all for hosting representatives of government offices and honest agencies who share information as to their policy and operations, but no promotion or indoctrination. There are honest businesses and government officers who are willing to follow this more suitable approach. We are all professionals, and we know that there are plenty of conferences organized by these entities, and we can attend them if we want to get that type of “insight” without having to waste presentation time during our own events listening to these detrimental forces.

I do not see the value of attending interpreter and translator associations’ conferences sponsored by those entities who are trying to convince us that we are an “industry” instead of a profession; because an industry has laborers, not professionals, and the latter demand a higher pay.  There is no need to spend your hard-earned money on conferences devoted to convince you that machines should translate and humans proofread, that interpreting services must be delivered by video using underpaid interpreters, and that if you dare to speak up against this nonsense, it means that you are opposed to the future of the profession.  I want to attend a conference where we can openly debate these modern tendencies of our professions, where we can plan how we will negotiate as equals with the owners of these technologies, and hold a dialogue with the scientists behind these new technologies, without a discredited multinational agency’s president as moderator of a panel, or a bunch of agency representatives giving us their company’s talking points again and again without answering any hard questions.

I want to be part of a conference where experienced interpreters and translators develop professional bonds and friendships with the newcomers to the professions, without having to compete against the recruiters who, disguised as compassionate veteran colleagues or experts, try to get the new interpreters and translators to drink the Kool-Aid that will make them believe that we are an industry, that modern translators proof-read machine translations, and good interpreters do VRI for a ridiculous low fee because they now “have more time to do other things since they do not need to travel like before”.

I want to go to a conference where I will have a good time and enjoy the company of my peers without having to look over my shoulder because the “industry recruiters” are constantly coming around spreading their nets to catch the new guy and the weak veteran.

Unfortunately, there will be no IAPTI international conference this year.  Because this organization delivers all of the points on my wish list, I always have to recommend it at the top of my “must-attend” conferences.  IAPTI cares so much for its members that after listening to them, it decided to move their annual conference from the fall to a different time of the year. Logistically, it was impossible to hold an international conference just a few months after the very successful event in Bordeaux this past September. The good news is that not everything is lost. Even though the international conference will have to wait until 2017, there will be several “IAPTINGS” all over the world throughout the year.  This are smaller, shorter regional high quality events that give us the opportunity to put in practice everything mentioned above.  Stay alert and look for these events; there might be one near you during 2016.

For my Spanish speaker colleagues, I truly recommend the VI Translation and Interpretation Latin American Congress (VI Congreso Latinoamericano de Traducción e Interpretación) to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 21-24, 2016. Because of its impressive list of presenters and speakers, and from the wide variety of topics to be discussed, this congress represents a unique opportunity for all our colleagues to learn and network in a professional environment with magnificent Buenos Aires as the backdrop. I hope to see you there.

For all my judiciary interpreters and legal translators, I recommend the NAJIT 2016 Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas on May 13-15, 2016. Although this year’s program has not been published yet, NAJIT is the largest judicial interpreter and translator organization in the United States, and perhaps in the world, and it constantly schedules topics of interest to the legal community; this is a great opportunity to network and give this event, and its current Board, a try.  I will personally attend the conference for the reasons I just mentioned, and because I have reason to believe that the organization is moving on the right direction towards the professional individual interpreter and translator and their rights.

During the fall of 2016 I will be attending the 20^th. Anniversary of the OMT Translation and Interpretation International Congress San Jerónimo (XX Congreso Internacional de Traducción e Interpretación San Jerónimo 2016) in Guadalajara, Mexico on November 26-27. This is a great event every year. It is held at the same time that the FIL International Book Fair at the Expo Guadalajara, and it brings together top-notch interpreters and translators, as well as celebrities of the world of linguistics and literature from all over.  This year the congress turns 20 and for what I have heard, it promises to be the best ever! Join us in Guadalajara this November and live this unique experience.

Although these are the conferences I suggest, keep your eyes open as there may be some local conferences that you should attend in your part of the world. I will probably end up attending quite a few more during 2016.  I would also invite you to look for smaller events that may be happening near you; events like Lenguando, and other workshops and seminars somewhere in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Finally, I invite you to share with the rest of us the main reasons that motivate you to attend a conference as well as those things that turn you off.

Professional values and interpreter identity affirmed at a dental office.

Dear Colleagues:

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that I spend most of the year traveling for work. To me, travel is a priceless tool that lets me peek through a window and see the world as it is, unfiltered and first-hand. It was something that happened during my last trip of 2015 that made me think about who I am as an interpreter, what I need professionally, and in my opinion what the true professional interpreter and translator need so we can be better at what we do for living.

Last week, while in Mexico City, I lost a tooth filling and I had to go to a local dental office to take care of it.  Fortunately there was no pain, but this is one of those things that you have to take care of right away, so I made an appointment the following morning to see a local dentist.  For those of you who have received all of your dental care in the United States this would be a true cultural experience.  The first thing that surprised me was that as soon as I was sitting in the waiting room the dentist who was going to take care of my tooth came out to let me know that it would not be long before they call me to see him.

Even more shockingly, there was absolutely no paperwork to fill out. Being used to answering endless questionnaires and signing tons of forms and releases in the United States before seeing anybody from the medical profession, I have to admit that I was surprised. Then, almost instantly, it sank in: This was a professional dental practice managed by professional dentists who thought and acted like members of the dental profession. They saw me as a person who needed a professional service: I was a patient. It never crossed their minds that I was a customer, they never saw their job as an industry. There was no need for endless paperwork for the assembly line because I was dealing with real professionals in a field where there is no room for commodities. There were no forms, releases, or “cover your butt” documents to read and sign because the dentists were calling the shots, not the insurance companies, not the pharmaceutical conglomerates, not the professional associations that are in bed with all of these other members of the cast who are in the dentists’ environment, but hold different and many times opposing interests and points of view to those of the professional delivering the service that I was there for.  The service was delivered professionally and promptly and I left the dental office happy and satisfied with the way they treated me and the services I received.

Dear friends and colleagues, I saw in action what many of us have tried to do throughout our careers, and at the same time, I saw the ugly face of that “reality”, foreign to our profession, that so many are trying to sell us as the true state of affairs and the future of the “industry”.   Thanks to a dental problem in a foreign country I got to see what our profession really looks when the decisions are made by interpreters and translators instead of multinational agencies, incompetent project managers, and corrupt entities who want us to believe that we belong at the industrial park with the car manufacturer and the sweat shop, when in reality we are part of the professional services provider world with the physician, the lawyer, and the dentist among others who are downtown and very far away from the language maquiladoras where some want us to live.

I was a direct client, in this case a direct patient, who entered a professional services relationship with the professional to deliver the dental care.  I paid a professional fee for the service rendered, and I was treated like a valuable individual. The fact that I met the dentist from the get go, made me feel comfortable and safe, even in a place as scary as a dental office with all of its sounds and smells. I had peace of mind throughout the entire episode because I always felt, and knew, that I was dealing with the person who knew what needed to be done: the professional dentist.

My friends and colleagues, this is exactly what we need to do every day. We have to deal with the client directly, we need to get them to experience the abysmal difference between on one hand dealing with a professional interpreter or translator who knows the field, can solve problems, and can deliver a world-class service at a well-deserved and earned world-class professional fee, and on the other hand having to deal with ignorant front desk individuals, monolingual agency owners, and unscrupulous multinational entities who many times charge as much as a real top-notch professional interpreter or translator and pocket most of it while paying the timid, scared or mediocre individual who translated the documents or interpreted the event a fee that even a beggar would consider an insult; and on top of all that, they see them as customers in a made-up industry, instead of clients getting a professional service.

A visit to a dentist in Mexico City motivated me to reaffirm my commitment to the profession, and inspired me to continue to practice a professional service without falling for those self-serving sophisms spreading the idea that we are not professionals but part of an “industry”.  At this time of the year when most people make New Year’s determinations, I ask you to join me on this commitment to defend the profession and our livelihood from these outside forces who want to vanish the idea that a professional works and acts like that dentist who I met in Mexico City last week.  I now invite you to share your comments on the issue of how you are educating your clients about the big differences and huge risks of hiring a “maquiladora interpreter or translator” from the “industry” instead of a professional.