Phone translation service for ethnic minorities
The government will launch a telephone interpreting service in July to help members of ethnic minorities gain access to public services, integration activities and language programmes.
The service will provide interpreting between Chinese or English and seven ethnic minority languages, the government announced yesterday.
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung named four non-governmental organisations that will receive government funding for the centralised translation service and three other centres to help ethnic minorities.
The NGO Hong Kong Christian Service will run the centralised telephone interpreting service. Its principal co-ordinator of services for ethnic minorities, Karrie Chan Chung-ho, said the service would begin in July and they aimed to recruit up to 20 interpreters.
The seven ethnic minority languages involved are Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Nepalese, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesian and Thai. Annual funding for the four centres will total HK$16 million, after start-up costs of HK$8 million.
The three other centres will be run by the International Social Service Hong Kong Branch, Christian Action and the Yuen Long Town Hall Management Committee.
'Recruitment will begin around June,' Ms Chan said. 'But it is not easy to find suitable candidates who can speak languages of ethic minorities and Chinese or English. Another challenge we have to handle is that some ethnic minority languages also have many dialects.'
Undersecretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen said most of the services provided would be free of charge and only minimal fees might be imposed on language courses.
The chief executive of Hong Kong Christian Service, Ng Shui-lai, said: 'Our centre will also provide on-site interpretation services, and users can use our service by appointment.'
