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Identity Theft Resource Center

IDENTITY THEFT HURTS IN ANY LANGUAGE:
MCELROY TRANSLATION AND ITRC HELP SPANISH SPEAKERS OVERCOME STRUGGLES WITH IDENTITY THEFT

Solution Summary

 Challenges:

• Identity theft is as much a problem among Spanish speakers as it is among native English speakers.
• Education and materials are not readily available to help Spanish speakers.
• Spanish speaking identity theft victims are often treated with disrespect by those with whom they must interact.

 Solution:

• The Identity Theft Resource Center produces numerous informational and educational documents and forms in English for victims.
• McElroy Translation, a full service language services provider based in Austin, Texas, donated its services for translation of key documents into Spanish.
• 34 victim oriented documents translated and made available to Spanish speakers through the ITRC website.

 Results:

• Better communication to Spanish-speaking victims.
• Quicker resolution of identity theft issues among Spanish speakers.

Identity Theft en Espanol: A Painful Intrusion

A credit card without a social security number; advertised on Mexican radio and television: Finally a chance for a Hispanic immigrant in the US to catch a break.

But is it? Actually, it is a real-life identity theft scheme that targets Hispanic Americans. And those caught up in the mess? They have very little recourse. They don’t know their rights, they may feel they don’t have any rights (if they are illegal), and they can be easily taken advantage by everyone from the thieves to the folks who are supposed to help them.

Identity theft is not a new problem. According to Gartner Research and other studies, there are between 9 and 15 million cases each year—a new case at least every 2.2 to 3.5 seconds.

But the numbers are even bleaker for the Hispanic identity theft victim. “The Demographics of ID Fraud,” published by Javelin Strategy & Research in January, 2007, indicated that Hispanics and African-Americans aged 25 – 54 have a 56 percent higher chance of becoming victims of identity fraud compared to other consumers. Together the fraud cases of these ethnicities represent 35 percent, or $20 billion, of total annual identity fraud losses.

As if regaining ones identity isn’t painful enough, Hispanics who are Spanish-only speakers have very few resources to help them and are often subjected to discrimination as they try to rebuild. “There is very little information available in Spanish, and Spanish media have not picked up on the need to educate,” said Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego. “When a victim is a Spanish-only speaker, they often do not know their rights, and those who should be helping them take advantage of them instead.”

This is sometimes true of even the staff employed by banks or collection agencies specifically to help Spanish speakers. Recently Foley was helping a Spanish speaking victim in her discussions with a collection agency. During the conversation, the victim consultant began ‘talking down’ to her by using the familiar ‘you’ in Spanish. When Foley pointed it out and told her to switch to the formal ‘you,’ the tone of the conversation changed for the better, and the victim’s issues were resolved.

Foley explains that the key to a quick recovery for any identity theft victim is knowledge. ITRC produces a large volume of educational and informational materials for victims. But the information is in English, and as a non-profit, victims-rights organization, ITRC does not have the funds to translate its corpus of information into Spanish.

Professional Translation: A Positive Reflection on ITRC

Foley and her staff were fortunate that McElroy Translation agreed to donate their services to help the Spanish victims. “We strive for excellence in all that we do, so we were very concerned about having a college student, or a non-trained Spanish speaker, translate our documents,” Rex Davis, Director of Operations, explained. “We would not be able to verify their quality and could end up doing more harm than good with our Spanish victims.”

McElroy Translation donated its services to help ITRC, translating over 28,000 words in the form of 34 documents. Everything from fact sheets to letter forms and examples of scams were translated. While McElroy will continue to translate more for ITRC, the first set of documents represents ITRC’s foundation of identity theft victim information.

“The impact McElroy had was not just providing us documents in Spanish,” said Davis. “They gave us a level of confidence that our documents would reflect upon us as being a professional group.”

McElroy Translation is a language service provider based in Austin, Texas. With forty years of experience in translating information into more than 100 languages, McElroy was well equipped to assist ITRC with its goal. All McElroy translators are evaluated on their translation skills as well as subject matter expertise, client knowledge and educational background. McElroy also has well established metrics in place to track its translation quality, ensuring a very high on-time delivery and a very low defect rate.

All of the Spanish documents are now live on ITRC’s newly updated website, where Spanish-speaking identity theft victims are already accessing them. Having the information in Spanish will speed their recovery from such a painful intrusion.

ITRC can be found at http://www.idtheftcenter.org.
McElroy Translation can be found at www.mcelroytranslation.com.