The Council fully endorses the removal of all barriers to effective participation regarding; disability, ethnicity, religion, local geography, special needs, language, learning difficulties, sexual orientation, gender or age.
The Borough Council subscribes to the services provided by Language Line. This is an external service providing language translation services either on the telephone, by post, fax or email.
- Language Line allows us to communicate with people whose English is limited or non-existent. Available at the end of an ordinary telephone line, the service enables us to offer equality of access to our services to people from a very wide range of national and ethnic backgrounds.
- Language Line offers over 100 languages, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. All the interpreters hold the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (where available) as a minimum requirement, and abide by a strict Code of Ethics, guaranteeing you accuracy, impartiality and confidentiality.
- Language Line was established in 1990 and is used by many public agencies and in local government offices throughout the country.
- Language Line also provides a document translation service.
Further information can be found by visiting the Language Line website.
Other Free Translations Services
You may wish to try the free translation service from AltaVista and Systran at http://babelfish.altavista.com
Babel Fish provides translation from English into 5 European languages - French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish and 3 Asian languages - Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
You will need to cut and paste the text or the initial URL of the page that you want translated into the text box on the AltaVista page, select the language that you want and the system will then redisplay the page with the text translated into the language you have chosen.
There are some restrictions on the size that can be submitted (about 5K) and the translation is understandable but not perfect.
A further free web based translator service is also available from the Free Translation website.
“Text to Speech” Reader Software
Text reader software such as Textaloud provides people with reading disabilities with a means of reading text from email, web pages, reports and more, aloud on your PC.
For more details you may wish to view information on Textaloud were you can download a free trial version?
Translation Booth
The Translation Booth website offers free translation in over 800 language pairs.