#Just translate spanish how to#
They know the demographics, so they know how to, how to communicate. She says some in her community just don't feel comfortable at banks or understand their products – and so they go to check-cashers, where they can rack up fees just for cashing their paychecks or take out more expensive loans.ĬORTÉS: The check cashers, they know their market. And it has one of the biggest deaf and hard of hearing populations in the country.Ĭortés works at the Empire Justice Center, which gives legal assistance to consumers in New York State. In Rochester, New York, where Marlene Cortés lives, there's a large number of people who speak Spanish, Somali, Arabic and Nepali. And across different parts of the country, Indigenous peoples speak their native languages at home. The vast majority of them speak Spanish, according to the Census Bureau, but many others speak different dialects of Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Arabic, French or Korean, to name a few. ROCHA: Some 25 million people in the U.S. But why has it taken so long, and what more can the industry and the government do to tackle this issue?įrom American Banker, I'm Polo Rocha, and this is Bankshot, a podcast about banks, finance and the world we live in. After the crisis in 2008, immigrants faced higher rates of foreclosure, which some attribute partly to language barriers that prevented homeowners from getting help.īanks and their regulators are well aware of this problem, and they're trying to fix it, especially with Spanish speakers. But consumer advocacy groups say his story is part of a bigger problem in the banking industry: language barriers force small business owners, homebuyers and other potential bank customers to borrow from more expensive lenders or to not do business at all. ROCHA: José says it's not a huge issue, and it's more of an inconvenience. JOSÉ: Es mejor que haiga una persona bilingüe. But he says it'd be better to talk to someone in-person who's bilingual. When he goes to his PNC branch, he's connected to a translating service and gets help that way.
JOSÉ: Solamente hay uno que sí habla un poquito, pero muy poco. Only one staffer at his local PNC branch speaks Spanish – and even then, he speaks only a little. ROCHA: José banks at PNC, and he tells me the only problem with his bank is that they don't have Spanish-speaking staff. JOSÉ: Sí, es el único problema, que no tienen personal que hable español, solo inglés. I stopped him as he left and asked him about his bank.
It's a rainy Friday evening, and it's busy here. POLO ROCHA: A 55-year old construction worker named José is walking out of a check-cashing shop at a strip mall in northern Virginia.
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