Mamadou Diallo isn’t always the first interpreter that his asylee clients speak to.
One client, a woman in her mid-50s, had struggled to communicate with another interpreter, who spoke a different version of Fulani, a West African language.
Diallo recalled that at one point, after he'd conversed with the woman, her relieved daughter said, "Oh, we have the right one."
Diallo, 45, from Senegal, is a founding member of the African worker-owned cooperative Afrilingual, which aims to improve the offerings of city agencies’ required language services – while providing local immigrants with well-paying jobs.
The 10-person group, which will officially launch in August, will be joined by cooperatives versed in other languages, and a Community Interpreter Bank for more common languages, all aiming to serve the immigrant community’s language needs from within.
The city invested $5 million in the efforts last year, but it’s unclear if they’ll get a spot in the next budget due on Friday. The initiatives were left out of Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed budget.
Accurate and accessible information and services is a matter of life and death for individuals, and a public health imperative for all of us.
The co-op will compete with out-of-state companies ranking in the lion’s share of city contracts for translation and interpretation services, worth some $13 million in 2019 and $21 million in 2020, according to estimates from the Independent Budget Office. Some city officials and advocates contend the existing providers are insufficient and leave many foreign-language speakers to rely on family members and nonprofits for help.
The need for interpreters in the city has only grown in the last year amid an influx of tens of thousands of new migrants to the city, including many from African countries.
“We see more and more people who need language-access services,” said Maimouna Dieye, program manager at African Communities Together, the nonprofit helping launch the co-op.
She later added: “It's right for these, our fellow New Yorkers, to be able to access city services in their languages.”
New York City is among the most linguistically diverse urban areas in the world, with more than 700 languages spoken, about 10% of the world’s known total, according to the Endangered Language Alliance. More than 1.2 million people living in the city speak a language at home spoken by less than 1% of the city’s population, per a 2020 report by the comptroller's office. The report said an estimated 220,000 of those individuals reported that they don't speak English well or at all.
And more than 3 million households in New York City are considered “limited English speaking,” meaning no member over the age of 14 is fluent in English, based on the most recent Census bureau data.
Afrilingual cooperative member Aminata Chabi Leke, 37, a Senegalese immigrant living in the Bronx, recently conducted a cultural competency training for attorneys, paralegals, and other staff at the local nonprofit Take Root Justice.
Arya Sundaram / Gothamist
Local officials have enacted more mandates to beef up the city government’s interpretation and translation services to ensure foreign-language speakers can access city services, including shelters and public benefits. But agencies still struggle to comply with these laws, such as Local Law 30, passed in 2017, requiring city agencies to provide telephonic interpretation in at least 100 different languages and translate key documents into the 10 most commonly spoken foreign languages.
The consequences of mistranslation can be severe. Errors can threaten proper medical care, or the chance to secure permanent residency in the country. The pandemic shined a light on the need for appropriate language services, wrote Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who chairs the immigration committee, in an op-ed supporting the initiative.
“Accurate and accessible information and services is a matter of life and death for individuals, and a public health imperative for all of us,” Hanif wrote.
Co-op members also speak of the group as a personal boon.
Diallo, for example, earned an English bachelor’s degree in Senegal, and he originally came to the U.S. on a student visa to train in computer science. He said he currently works part-time as an Uber driver, and full-time for $37 per hour as a houseman at the W Hotel.
The Newark resident said he hopes the co-op will offer him a better-paying career.
“I just don’t want to do all those informal jobs,” Diallo said.
He later added: “If we do well, if we work hard, it can be a source of living.”
But Diallo says his participation isn’t entirely financial, referencing a time he missed a day job shift to help a client.
He says he’s gratified knowing that his work helps another African immigrant get the services they need, or the chance to win asylum.
“They're my people. It’s my community,” he said. They're an underserved community.”
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