With 196 countries in the world, you would think the number of languages would be multiples of three or four of that. But currently there are an estimated 6,000-plus languages being spoken by as few as single individuals, all the way to 1,213,000,000 people.
Although the vast majority of these languages are not used for official state business, around 240 of them are used by public and private organizations around the world. It is therefore essential for translation service providers to have the capability of addressing these languages. LanguageLine Solutions (News - Alert), a provider of translation services, is opening a new call center in El Paso, Texas, bringing 100 new jobs for translators to the area.
The El Paso Times points out one of the reasons for this move by the company is to take advantage of the large bilingual population in the city. The new facility will be providing translation services for public and private organizations around the country over the phone. Banks, 911 call centers, hospitals and other public agencies will be just some of the organizations using the services of LanguageLine.
The company has five call centers in the US and another six in Latin America, with a global client base of close to 25,000 businesses and governments providing translation services in more than 200 languages.
With more than 30 years of service, LanguageLine has a total workforce of 6,000 translators, of which 4,500 work from home. The services the company provides include telephone interpreting, on-site interpreting, document translation, video remote and mobile interpreting. The company covers virtually every industry that needs translation services such as healthcare, enterprises, SMBs, insurance, utilities and others.
According to company President and CEO Scott W. Klein, El Paso was chosen after a yearlong selection process in which 12 cities were vetted before the decision was made. The El Paso Times said in its report that the company is looking to expand the workforce to hundreds at the 40,000 square-foot center in the future.