I came across a very nice piece of news today and just had to share it with you dear readers. The story is about Nora Punales who works as a receptionist with the Anderson Police Department. Punales who is 53 started working on a temporary basis, she was happy to get the job in the first place, but could never have imagined how pleasantly things turned out.
As matters stand, Anderson has a rapidly growing Hispanic population but the police department did not have any fluent Spanish speakers. At the best they had a few officers with limited Spanish skills, consequently communication with the locals was fraught with difficulties. That was till Nora Punales joined, she is now the only one now who speaks both English and Spanish fluently and helps the department communicate clearly with Hispanic visitors and prisoners on a daily basis.
Punales on her part is very happy that she gets to work as a receptionist, as well as the resident translator and interpreter. Apart from the regular responsibilities of answering the phone, filing and answering various queries of visitors, she spends about 40-45% of her time putting her translation skills to use. The Hispanic locals have become a lot more comfortable coming to the police department with their issues, in fact many of them ask for Nora Punales straightaway. She has proved to be so valuable to the police department that inspite of the fact that she was hired temporarily, the Anderson police department have been able to raise a sufficient amount of money to extend her job for another year.
Similar Posts:
- The importance of bilingual police officers
- Tops banks in the United States zero in on Spanish speaking customers
- Spanish translation in 2010
- Nexus One Apps
- Oregon provides language translation options in its official website
