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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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Thebigword Translates for Inmates of the Big House
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Over 9 million people worldwide wake up daily in penal institutions, more than 2 million in the United States alone and over 77,000 in the United Kingdom. In the U.S. 726 of every 100,000 Americans sit in jail, while the U.K. incarcerates a mere 145 residents for every 100,000 Englishmen.
That's a lot of people sitting behind bars who need to know what's going on. Wardens of the big house must communicate critical information from staff to prisoners about policies, conditions, their rights, and preparations for "life on the outside." The problem is that some speak languages other than English. Some of these non-Anglophones are local minorities, while others are foreigners (6.5% of those held in U.S. jails are non-Americans, not counting those held without a writ of habeas corpus in various prisons around the world, while 12.5% of U.K. inmates are not English).
U.K. LSP thebigword won the contract to translate content into Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Welsh, and Urdu for prisoners in England and Wales. The company deployed its TranzManager Content portal to integrate with the prison system's content workflow, thus ensuring a quick passage from English to thebigword's translators into the target languages.
This job is a great example of increasing revenue by providing services to an industry that most LSPs probably never considered. Prisoners have language needs just like any other large community. Given the enormous size of the U.S. prison population, thebigword's next stop should be San Quentin prison in California. With an annual operating budget of US$120 million (2003 data), there should be a few bucks available for translation.
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