When Darcy Lopez started her interpreting and translation business six years ago, she and another interpreter, along with an office manager, were the only staff.  

Today, her Windsor Heights-based company, Voices LLC, employs about 40 full-time interpreters, supported by a five-person office staff. It also contracts with about 140 additional interpreters to provide services throughout the Midwest and in a number of multilingual population centers stretching from Southern California to New Jersey, Florida and Texas. 

Remarkably, Voices is getting more business than it can keep up with from a single specialty niche — workers’ compensation interpreting. 

“We’ve grown, and that’s good, because there are not enough interpreters who are knowledgeable on the workings of workers’ compensation, the vocabulary and what happens in a workers’ compensation case,” Lopez said. The company focused on workers’ compensation because of the expertise of its co-founder, who is a nurse case manager. 

Voices’ primary focus is on-site interpretation, along with interpretation for employee safety training. 

“Whenever a worker gets hurt at a plant or a construction site, they’re entitled to an interpreter to help get their medical care,” Lopez said. “That’s where we come in. We attend all their medical appointments, therapies, any legal matters such as hearings or depositions. 

“We also help with employee safety training interpretation so they can understand how to avoid accidents and falls,” she said. “We do interpreting for on-site OSHA training, translation of documents that need to be signed.”

Holmes Murphy & Associates has referred a number of clients to Voices as a communication and risk-mitigation service, which has helped fuel the interpreting company’s multistate growth. 

Communication barriers from an increasingly multicultural workforce could expose companies to safety and liability risks, said Rodney Miner, vice president of enterprise claim services with Holmes Murphy.  

“Communication can be difficult even when the parties speak the same language, but when they don’t, or they’re not familiar with the heritage and cultural background, it makes it even more difficult to get your messages across,” he said. 

“There are also legal requirements that employers have to make sure their employees understand things from a safety and risk side. So for proper training and education and just for strong relationships, that line of communication needs to be strong.” 

The industries that have the greatest exposure to multilingual risks are concentrated in the construction, manufacturing and retail sectors, Miner said. 

So, to what degree are companies taking Holmes Murphy’s advice to offer interpretation services? 

“I would tell you, not enough,” Miner said. “Those that are involved with that are probably our most forward-thinking clients that we work with that are being proactive in improving their environment within their industry.” 

Although there’s no data for the number of cases involving workers needing interpreters, the overall number of new workers’ compensation cases rose last year. According to data from Iowa Workforce Development, workers in the state filed 5,889 petitions for workers’ compensation benefits in fiscal year 2017, a nearly 18 percent increase from fiscal 2016. 

The growth for Voices has been organic, many times due to requests from clients with multiple locations across the country, Lopez said. “It just grew with our customers who wanted that same level of service outside of Iowa.” 

Lopez, who herself interprets Polish and Spanish to English, answered a few other questions about her company’s niche. 

Are you finding enough qualified people to work as interpreters? 
That’s always an issue, finding enough qualified folks, because we’re constantly keeping our [current interpreters] overbooked. Fortunately we’re always able to find enough multilingual staff. And we offer our own training and medical/legal interpreting certification. … DMACC has an amazing interpretation and translation program, with tracks in health care, legal and human resources. They funnel a lot of their graduates our way.  

How many languages do your interpreters collectively handle? 
In Central Iowa we interpret between 50 and 60 languages — it’s constantly changing — and overall we have about 70 languages nationwide. And that’s not even half the languages in the world. We’ve got a lot of growth to do.

One of our gals from West Africa, she speaks six languages, and her calendar is just out of control. And it’s not just from English to a target language. We have some doctors who are operating via telemed services. For instance, I interpreted once for a doctor in Poland who was speaking to a Hispanic patient, so I was interpreting from Polish to Spanish and vice versa. 

What are the ethics of interpreting when working for the employer? 
It can’t be biased against anyone. One of our rules in our code of ethics is unbiased interpretation. For instance, in an examination room, if there’s a conversation between a doctor and case manager that an English-speaking person would hear, we have to interpret that. A good interpreter is a fly on the wall, and it’s a thankless job — it should be.

State seeks to meet demand for multilingual workers

In an effort to bolster the state’s ranks of multilingual workers, Gov. Kim Reynolds recently signed Senate File 475 into law, which establishes a Seal of Biliteracy program to recognize high school graduates with proficiency in a second language other than English. 

A broad coalition of elected officials and business organizations supported the legislation, including the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Iowa Chamber Alliance and New American Economy, a national coalition of municipal and business leaders who support immigration reform. 

Between 2010 and 2016, online job postings in Iowa for bilingual workers grew by nearly 200 percent, increasing from 1,658 to 4,946 job postings. Demand for candidates who speak Spanish more than doubled over the same period, increasing from 1,169 to 2,669 job postings.