Translators who know it all

Network Omni was set up in 1983 from a kitchen table in Los Angeles. The business is now believed to be the second-largest telephone translation service in the world


Whether it's a carload of foreign tourists lost on the way to Disneyland, a kidnapping or a group of Kurdish refugees seeking political asylum, the translators at Network Omni have heard it all.

From their cubicles in a low-rise shopping centre in Thousand Oaks, California, USA, they operate a sort of mini-United Nations that at times sounds a bit like the Tower of Babel. More than 150 languages are spoken here, from Chinese and Spanish to Hmong and Navajo.

The phone rings 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Recently a call came in from a frantic Haitian woman in Florida who had just had a car accident. She couldn't speak English to the responding officer so he called Omni. In seconds, a Creole translator was on the line. The woman's voice calmed immediately as the translator smoothly explained to each party what the other was saying.

Then there was a call from an insurance company trying to communicate with an Apache client. Omni put an Apache translator in the appropriate dialect on the line.

"We go from the mundane to the catastrophic,'' said George Ulmer, the trilingual founder and chief executive of the company. "These translators never know what will hit them.''

Ulmer started Network Omni in 1983, operating from his kitchen table in Los Angeles. The business is now believed to be the second-largest telephone translation service in the world after Language Line, an AT&T spinoff.

"They are our largest competitor,'' said Evan Ollinger, spokesman for Language Line, a Monterey, California-based company that fields nine million calls a year. "They are a good company that has been around a long time.''

Omni has 4,800 clients and takes one million calls a year. It has contracts with major credit card and worldwide travel companies as well as health-care and law-enforcement agencies. The company has worked on investigations with the CIA, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. After the September 11, it made its Arabic interpreting and translating services available to the U.S. government.

But even Omni sometimes stumbles across a language it can't decipher. Then it sends out for someone who can. It was once asked to translate documents as part of a federal investigation into a major Nigerian drug ring. But it didn't have anyone who could understand the specific dialect – Igbo – used in the papers. "We flew in a tribal chief from Nigeria who could translate the documents,'' Ulmer said.

Network Omni works with 2,500 interpreters worldwide and has about 480 full-time employees, with 135 based in Thousand Oaks. It also has offices in Miami and in Gresham, Oregon, and plans to open branches in Houston and in South America. Many translators work from home after receiving intense training at Omni sites. And although 150 languages are offered, most of the work is done in 40 to 50 languages.

"Translators need to be quick and precise,'' said Irene Stone, director of quality assurance. "We monitor them and grade them on how they are doing. It's hard to find a perfect bilingual person.''

Her assistant, Maria Bean, noted, "Interpreting is like breathing in and out at the same time.''

It's also about capturing not just the words but the unique expressions of different cultures. Translators say a Korean might say he has a "sinking heart'' instead of depression. An Indonesian might report someone suffering from latah, a sort of Tourette syndrome. A Russian may fret about getting their "white paper'' or immigration documents in order.

"We look not just for bilingual but bi-cultural people,'' said David Wray, Omni's recruiting and scheduling manager.

Ulmer knows firsthand about bi-culturalism. Born in Switzerland, he travelled for years throughout the Middle East, Africa and South America selling aluminum. Although he speaks French, German and Italian, he recalls hours of tedium waiting in hotels for interpreters and thinking what a waste of time and money it all was.

Eventually, Switzerland's cold drove him to Los Angeles, where he attended the University of Southern California. Looking at the vast sea of people and languages flooding into Southern California, Ulmer spotted a niche for interpreters in law enforcement, health care and corporate America.

"At the beginning, we had seven to 10 languages,'' he said. "I did it from my kitchen on a part-time basis. I realised what a niche this was, so I moved here (Thousand Oaks) and realised we could do much of it on the phone.''

His first major client was the CHP, which was overwhelmed by non-English-speakers using highway call boxes. Ulmer expanded into translating documents and sending people to depositions and court hearings. His language base grew beyond Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and French into more exotic tongues such as Lao, Hmong, Mien, Armenian and Gujarati.

As ethnic diversity increased, so did business. Omni translators found themselves on the phone with increasingly complex calls.

Last May, they helped the British government handle large numbers of Iraqi Kurds seeking political asylum. Omni trained six Kurdish interpreters, who provided translation services for 125 people a day.

Translators helped a doctor tell his Spanish-speaking patient she was about to have a breech birth and needed a Caesarean section. They also directed a carload of lost tourists who spoke an obscure dialect of Romany to Disneyland.

The translating room is a quiet, intense place with dozens of conversations in numerous languages taking place all the time. Operators take calls from clients and route them to the appropriate translator.

Carol El Murr, a Frenchwoman who spent her childhood in Beirut, took a break from her job as Arabic and French translator. "I just had an Arabic call from a man who had an accident and couldn't express himself to the police,'' she said. "It's frustrating to be in a country and you can't express yourself.''

Translators who speak languages such as Vietnamese are paid as much as $15 an hour, while those using more common tongues such as Spanish earn between $7 and $12. Omni considers Vietnamese the biggest growth language.

"It's difficult mentally and difficult emotionally,'' said Grace Cho, a Korean translator, "your needs to process two different languages at very high speeds.''

Ulmer said the translation business is recession-proof. After the September 11 attacks, business soared because of the need for translators of Arabic and other languages. And the influx of immigrants into the United States offers new growth opportunities. "It's very rewarding work,'' Ulmer said.

© Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service