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Links: Police Translation Services
Posted by Steven Wu on Thursday, April 22 @ 14:01:04 EDT Oddities
The New York Times has a story on how cellphones allow New York police officers to help immigrants:
The police officer's cellphone - which links her to 24-hour translation service in 150 languages - is part of a new effort aimed at one of the city's most intractable criminal justice problems: domestic violence among immigrants. The violence often goes unreported or unresolved, the police and prosecutors say, because victims cannot communicate with the police or fear reprisals by their own relatives, since many come from cultures where domestic abuse is tolerated by law or custom. . . .

"Often with immigrant families, the husband is the only one who speaks English," said Officer Trimoglie, who has used the phone four times. "If she calls 911, by the time we get there he's in control of everything and we only get his side of the story. This phone gives everybody equal ground so we can see what's really going on."

To the extent that such a thing is possible in today's world, this seems like an unambiguously good program.
 
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