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~~ <br />The County currently does not offer any hiring incentives or bonuses for multilingual <br />employees; however, some positions are designated for bi-Lingual employees and <br />individuals considered for those positions must speak Spanish as a minimal job <br />requirement. <br />AT& T Language Line <br />A number of Departments also use the AT&T language line. The language line is a <br />service that provides interpreters over the phone 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in <br />approximately 140 different languages. The service enables speakers. of different <br />languages to communicate by telephone via athree-way conference call, which <br />includes an interpreter. <br />The language line is a very important tool because it provides access to interpreter <br />assistance in almost every spoken language. However, interpreters mayor may not <br />have specialized abilities to use medical or legal terminology and the services are <br />expensive. Orange County does not have a general subscription with the AT&T <br />language line so individual Department's subscribe as they are financially able. <br />Additionally, use of a telephone interpreter may make it difficult to provide services <br />when sensitive issues are being handled such as domestic violence services or child <br />abuse related services. <br />Based on the Department of Emergency Management's records, there is no set fee <br />for the use of the AT&T language line. The charge is based on the language needed, <br />the date, time and length of the call. From July 2005 to February 2006, Emergency <br />Management Services - has paid $ 6,893.12 for language line translation services <br />averaging approximately $690 per month. However, cost varies vastly month to- <br />month, in March 2006 the County was charged almost $2000 for language line <br />services. The cost of the language line is paid by several County Departments. <br />14 <br />