Business Spotlight: Signs of the Times

Business partners Cindy Lear and Rebecca Blitch are entrepreneurs second and sign language interpreters first. They just do very little interpreting these days, because they’re handling the full-time task to pair some 20 contract interpreters with their company’s roughly 200 clients.

The Associates in Sign Language LLC founders parlayed years of signing themselves – growing up around deaf family and friends – and work in interpreting and social services into a business venture in 2005. Upon relocating to Springfield, Lear from Kansas City and Blitch from Vermont, they discovered a service gap for the deaf in dealings with medical caregivers, educators and legal professionals.

“Springfield was probably 10 or 15 years behind the communities that we both came from,” says Lear, who earned a master’s degree in counseling the deaf in Oregon and ran the mental health services for the state of Kansas before relocating to Springfield.

At the time, hospitals, for instance, had a list of interpreters to call one-by-one for services. If one interpreter didn’t immediately answer the phone, the hospital representative would move down the list until one would agree on the spot. “There wasn’t this seamless way to get an interpreter,” Lear adds.

The lack of a professional service to connect sign language interpreters with the businesses that communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing fed the startup.

“We thought if we could answer our phones, we could fill our schedules. And we were correct,” Lear says. “We had more work than we could fill.”

Within the first year, Lear and Blitch had hired their first interpreter to help, and a steady growth curve between 5 percent and 54 percent annually landed ASL revenues at $426,000 last year.

“We didn’t start as entrepreneurs,” says Lear, noting the partners launched the low-overhead business from their homes with just $1,500. “I came from not-for-profit and other people did that. I was a social worker, and Rebecca was a provider of interpreter services.

“It’s learn as you go; sink or swim.”

They experienced the earliest demands in health care and education, and those fields remain the most active. “Nobody wants to pay for an interpreter. It is a cost that is unfunded, so the hospitals have to bear that burden,” Lear says.

Today, ASL has roughly 20 contracts with such entities as CoxHealth, Mercy, Ozarks Technical Community College, Lakeland Behavioral Health System and Jordan Valley Community Health Center. It signed its first state contract about a year ago with the Department of Corrections, and its interpreters also work regularly in area courtrooms, nursing homes, employment offices and Branson theaters.

ASL’s interpreters handle up to 75 medical appointments per week, at least half of the firm’s volume, and about 85 hours weekly at OTC classes for a half-dozen deaf students. State services cover roughly 35 hours and court cases are performed as needed.

Lear says the national standard range for interpreter pay is $12 per hour in schools and up to $300 per hour in courts and for technical language specialties. The rates vary based on such factors as time of day and emergency status, and she says ASL prices are negotiated, particularly on the long-term contracts.

Professional interpreters have a two-hour minimum standard, and ASL sends interpreters as far as Joplin, Branson, West Plains, Rolla and Hermitage.

Working full-time for ASL since December, freelance interpreter Tiffany Bradford, of Nixa, interprets about 30 hours per week, mostly between nine OTC classes, covering theater, anthropology, car engine repair and digital photography.

As a Level 3 interpreter, out of five levels, Bradford says her pay rate is roughly $30 an hour, unless she’s working a show at Dixie Stampede or Sight & Sound Theatre, for which ASL pays a flat $120 rate.

Bradford says her chosen profession is manageable, but with any freelance career, it takes discipline.

“There’s no guarantee that we’re going to get the exact same amount of hours each week. You just have to be smart with your money,” she says, noting there is local demand for professional interpreters. “You can make it work, definitely.”

Bradford is among a handful of tactile interpreters who work with deaf/blind clients onz behalf of ASL. The specialty requires a more intimate and challenging interpreting experience.

“It’s just more physically taxing,” Bradford says of tactile interpreting, which Bradford learned on her way to earning a sign language interpreting degree at Metropolitan Community College in North Kansas City. “You have this person’s weight put on to your hands. That will put more strain on your back. You have to be used to being that close to the person. Your knees are interlocked – you can’t have your own personal bubble.

“It’s not an easy job. I’ve had one fall asleep on me before, and that’s dead weight. There are only so many ways to try and wake someone up.”

Lear says interpreters are now getting more widely recognized as a professional class.

“Our landscape is changing. Now, interpreters are required to have bachelor’s degrees,” she says of a new national standard.

The business landscape for ASL also is changing. In October, Blitch and her husband moved to Florida in pursuit of a school for the deaf to meet the needs of their two adopted Ethiopian children.

The partners say the move has had no material consequence on ASL’s operations.

“The good thing about our business is I can do everything from here, except for interpreting,” Blitch says from her home in St. Augustine, Fla.

Now, that’s the sign of an entrepreneur.[[In-content Ad]]