Bridging the Gap for Afghani Refugees

As someone who has worked with languages and cultures for a significant part of my professional life, I am excited that Lexington, KY is in the process of welcoming a new group of refugees from Afghanistan. We have been vaguely familiar with this land-locked country a half a world away-a country where the United States had a military presence for the better part of two decades. Now the longest war in US history, airstrikes began on October 7, 2001, and the last of our troops left the country this past August.

The Lexington office of Kentucky Refugee Ministries has been busy resettling the newly-arrived Afghanis. One of the first questions was: who in the Lexington area speaks the languages of the Afghani people, and are any of these people trained interpreters? As the Program person for the Kentucky Interpreter & Translator Association (KITA), I knew we hadn’t trained any Dari or Pashto speakers, the two most spoken languages in Afghanistan. Yet, KRM and the social services network of the city would need professional interpreting to communicate effectively to meet the needs of our new neighbors.

In January 2020, when COVID was only a whisper several continents away, Access Language Solutions added on-demand phone and video interpreting to its offerings. Little did we know that just three short months later, over-the-phone interpreting (OPI) in particular would mean the difference between continuing or suspending services for many of our clients. An interpreter was now just a phone call away: a welcome alternative to the risky onsite interpreting to which they previously only had access.

The solution to the Dari/Pashto language dilemma has also been OPI. While KITA works on training multilingual Afghanis as interpreters, Access

Language Solutions’ phone and video interpreting platforms fill in the gaps. It allows clients to begin the resettlement process. In just a few weeks, clients will have the options of phone, video, and onsite professional interpreting in these critical languages.