Need for 911 call translators is small but crucial for emergency dispatchers

In March, a woman called 911 and said she’d stabbed her boyfriend — but she didn’t confess in English. She spoke Nepali. The Allegheny County 911 operator used a translation service to patch a Nepali translator into the call, allowing the operator to gather critical information about the stabbing and relay that information to first responders. The woman was later charged with homicide.

This doesn’t happen often — most people who call 911 in Allegheny County are fluent in English — but when a non-English speaker calls for help, being able to translate in real time is critical, said communications officer Lucas Bark.

“They’re already excited, because they’re in a crisis, so they’re talking fast, they’re not answering questions sometimes, and then you throw a language barrier on top of that, and it makes it very difficult,” he said.

The county relies on a national company, Language Line Services, to provide on-the-spot translation in a variety of situations, said Allegheny County Emergency Services Chief Matt Brown.

“It could be a person calling in to report an emergency, or a call for service from a detective who is interviewing somebody and doesn’t know what [language] they’re speaking, or it could be paramedics on a scene treating somebody,” hesaid.

When a communications officer realizes a 911 caller is not speaking English, the operator can bring a Language Line translator into the call with a few clicks, and then continue the call as normal by speaking through the translator.

Of the about 130,500 calls for service that Allegheny County 911 answered in April, only 35 required a Language Line translator, records show. But those 35 calls encompassed 13 different languages, including Spanish, Russian, Swahili, Mandarin, Arabic and Kinyarwanda — an official language of Rwanda.

The county only pays for translation services that it uses, Mr. Brown said. A typical monthly bill is around $1,500.

Thetranslation service is one of several ways the county tries to accommodate callers. People can text 911, and the county also keeps a voluntary “special needs registry” in which people can log unique information that might be important for first responders to know during an emergency, like a mental or physical disability.

If a resident enters the information into the registry prior to an emergency - — noting that someone in the home is blind or deaf, for example -— then that information will pop up on the operator’s screen when a 911 call is made from that address.