Translating advice for workers is “cost-prohibitive” and could “be perceived as an act of discrimination” against other minority-language speakers, the head of an employment relations service said as she defended the organisation’s decision to only publish key materials in English.
Jersey Advisory Conciliation Services director Patricia Rowan made the comments this morning while speaking to a Health and Social Security Scrutiny Sub-panel focusing on reviewing family-friendly legislation.
She explained that JACS – which advises workers and employers on employment-related questions – currently only publishes materials, such as explainer videos, in English.
If you translate [employment documents] into one [language], and you miss out others, could that be perceived as an act of discrimination?
Patricia Rowan, director of Jersey Advisory Conciliation Services
When asked by Deputy Lucy Stephenson whether the organisation provides translations, Ms Rowan said the materials “translate really well” using an external service like Google Translate.
The JACS director added: “We don’t have the resources. It’s a really expensive thing to translate documents. And what would you translate?
“How many languages would you need to translate it into? Because we have 56 languages being spoken in Jersey.
“If you translate into one, and you miss out others, could that be perceived as an act of discrimination, because we’re not providing that same service to others?”
Translation was “cost-prohibitive”, she added.
Ms Rowan said that JACS had individual documents translated in the past – citing a terms of employment document that was translated into Portuguese “a couple of years ago” – but added that the organisation then realised they “couldn’t go down that route with other languages”.
She added that the organisation encouraged people to bring a friend with them into meetings.
Asked whether there was a gap in services for non-native English speakers, Ms Rowan said: “There might be a gap, but I can’t say that there is, because we do get people for whom English isn’t their first language coming to us.”
