2009 is here
What does it mean for B&A?

It is the start of a new year. 2009 marks a very important landmark for Bromberg & Associates. In June, B&A will be celebrating its 10th anniversary. This stands to prove that the company has succeeded in meeting the needs of its clients for a decade and the B&A team continues to produce quality ideas to further enhance the company.

Just like everybody else, we have faced the challenges of an economic crisis. Disasters of the U.S. economy have a profound global and domestic effect. While some language companies that focused their efforts on serving one specific industry have fallen to the way-side under the onslaught of the economic crisis, B&A has managed to not only survive but to grow and expand. One thing that sets our company apart from the others is its ability to diversify and maintain a fresh and innovative approach, while always sustaining a high quality of services.

In the recent years, B&A has added many new types of language services to its portfolio and welcomed many competent and creative professionals to its team. B&A started with a handful of languages and now offers over 150 different languages globally. Currently, our clients enjoy not only on-site and conference interpreting services but, also, the convenience of over-the phone interpreting. Introduction of online submission of written documents for translation and localization has become yet another way to serve our clients. Just a few quick clicks allow you to get in touch with our translation project manager Irina K. It saves our clients much time, money, and hassle.

One of our strengths is the knack for discovering and nurturing talented interpreters, translators, and project managers. While many competent interpreters and translators of Spanish and Arabic languages live and work in Michigan, there is an acute shortage of qualified language professionals who work in less common languages, such as Vietnamese, Bosnian, Ukrainian, Bengali, or Cantonese. Many bilingual professionals assume that their command of languages is sufficient to serve in a capacity of interpreter or translator. A 30 minute qualification test proves them wrong. However, we are sifting our applicants through a fine sieve of the Interpreter Aptitude Test and strongly encourage those who qualify to peruse a linguistic career. Moreover, we are providing them with professional training and development opportunities, thus improving the interpreter performance standards in our region. This effort found a national recognition at the National Council of Interpreting in Health Conference Annual Conference in Atlanta, GA. Jinny Bromberg gave an overview of the company’s effort to advance our contract interpreter skills and knowledge of specific subject areas, such as interpreting in mental health and social services settings, insurance disputes, or conference interpreting.

With very few opportunities offered to language professionals by the traditional educational system, we feel compelled to give our colleagues an opportunity to grow professionally and further develop their skills and talents. The first step in this direction was the development of Training Guides for legal and medical interpreters. We are proud to announce that quite a few schools have chosen our Guides as study books for their courses. Encouraged by this success, and based on its extensive experience in interpreter training provided by B&A to the local interpreter community for many years, we decided to reach a wider community of language professionals and offer interpreter training on-line. The pilot course in legal interpreting is scheduled to launch next spring.

B&A works not only to educate interpreters but the language services consumer as well. We continuously present on the subject of working with interpreters and Limited English Proficiency patients and clients. In 2008, B&A had an opportunity to speak at several national conferences covering a multitude of disciplines including healthcare, business and law.

As you can see, this versatile approach to providing a service to people has opened a door for the company to succeed in multiple areas. Hopefully, diversity, creativity, and hard work will spring the company even further in 2009.