Maryland Multilingual Gateway

Maryland - 030197

Abstract Number: 030197

December 2003

Under a TIG grant from the Legal Services Corporation, the Legal Aid Bureau and the Maryland Legal Assistance Network (MLAN) partnered to create a multilingual gateway for limited English proficient (LEP) members of the public seeking to access legal information through Maryland's online Peoples Law Library (PLL). MLAN staff based the design of the PLL's multilingual gateway on the Social Security Administration's multilanguage gateway available online at: http://www.ssa.gov/multilanguage/index.htm. Recognizing that many clients will be directed by librarians, advocates, and social workers to multilingual materials on the PLL, MLAN designed the multilingual gateway in a mirror structure to ensure English speakers can locate the appropriate material in English and then confidently refer the client to the desired content in the client's preferred language.

To overcome the problem of how LEP clients would locate the multilingual gateway, PLL placed an icon prominently on their homepage listing the languages in which PLL currently has content which includes information in Chinese, Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Korean, Russian, and Tagalog. To decide what languages should be included in the multilingual gateway, PLL gathered data form the Maryland Office for New Americans and the census as they sought to target MLAN's low-income, LEP client community.

Since this project was launched on a very limited budget, Legal Aid and MLAN consciously opted to limit the scope of the materials available in multiple languages and sought instead to provide LEP clients with the most commonly used and critical materials for clients. To accomplish this task, MLAN gathered material through PLL's 28 partner Maryland legal services providers and requested the most commonly used and critical outreach materials. While MLAN was able to secure most of their bilingual content for free, MLAN commissioned translations for the most critical documents such as the House of Ruth's safety plan for domestic violence victims. In addition to providing legal information for each language listed above, PLL also provides guidance on how LEP visitors can find legal help, use online resources to translate documents, as well as locate additional information on the web. When listing legal services providers, PLL indicates useful information such as whether or not the receptionist or intake worker will speak the client's preferred language upon answering the phone. PLL provides a link to free online translation services. Although these services cannot serve as a substitution for high quality translations, they can provide LEP clients with a better idea of what a document in English covers thereby enabling the client to take steps to secure a more reliable translation by contacting a local legal services office. To learn more, access PLL's Multilingual Gateway.

Contact Information:

Ayn H. Crawley
Maryland Legal Assistance Network/MLSC
15 Charles Plaza, Suite 102
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: (410) 576-9494 ext1012
Email Email

Rhonda Lipkin
Legal Aid Bureau
500 East Lexington
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: (410) 951-7682
rlipkin@mdlab.org

back to top ^