Language Interpretation Guidelines for
Asian battered women

The Asian & Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence assembled a technical assistance package to provide advocates with information on the roles of interpreters, protocols, ethical issues, and the unintended consequences of unskilled interpretation. Service agencies and systems that battered women with limited English proficiency have contact with often lack access to professional interpreters and rely on bilingual advocates to interpret for clients.

We urge you to share these materials extensively with staff and volunteer advocates and those providing formal or informal interpretation. We hope these materials will clarify and guide the policies and procedures in your programs, with the ultimate goal of increasing safety for Asian and Pacific Islander battered women and children.

We wish to thank all the authors and publishers for permission to reproduce and distribute their work, which we have excerpted or produced in their entirety.

• Model Protocol on Services for Limited English Proficient Immigrant and Refugee Victims of Domestic Violence Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Full report is available at www.wscadv.org/Resources/protocol_LEP_victims.pdf
• Excerpts from California Standards for Health Care Interpreters California Healthcare Interpreters Association and The California Endowment. For full report, click here.
• Multilingual Groups: Some Practical Considerations Mimi Kim , MSW
  To download file, click here.
• Glossaries of Domestic violence terms and Key Language Phrases in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, developed by Asian Women's Shelter www.sfaws.org, are available in hardcopy only. Please contact us for copies.

If you would like copies of the package or have questions, please call us at 415-568-3313 or e-mail apidvinstitute@apiahf.org.

December 2004