Contact us by email at interpreting@alsglobal.net or via phone at 1-800-951-5020 for a free estimate on our ASL and CART services.

Trusted CART & ASL Services in Scranton, PA

American Language Services has been helping businesses and other entities reach the deaf and hard of hearing community for more than 35 years. While in-person interpreting, at one time, was the only option, recent technological advances opened the door to other options. Since we offer full-service Video Remote Interpreting (VRI), this article will be comparing Virtual American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting with Communication Access Real-Time Translation (AKA- Closed Captioning & Real Time Subtitling) known as CART.

 Please note that according to the American Disability Act (ADA) that deaf and hard of hearing community have the legal right to receive full access through the use of ASL and or CART services. The ADA prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities and providing ASL interpreters for deaf individuals complies with federal law and promotes equal accessibility.

Some interesting Facts About the City of Scranton

• Scranton is the geographic and cultural center of the Lackawanna River valley, and the largest of the former anthracite coal mining communities in a contiguous quilt-work that also includes Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, and Carbondale.
• Scranton was incorporated on February 14, 1856, as a borough in Luzerne County and as a city on April 23, 1866.
• It became a major industrial city, a center of mining and railroads, and attracted thousands of new immigrants.
• It was the site of the Scranton General Strike in 1877.
• People in northern Luzerne County began to seek a new county in 1839 but the Wilkes-Barre area resisted losing its assets.
• Lackawanna County did not gain independent status until 1878.
• Under legislation allowing the issue to be voted by residents of the proposed territory, voters favored the new county by a proportion of 6 to 1, with Scranton residents providing the major support.
• The city was designated as the county seat when Lackawanna County was established in 1878, and a judicial district was authorized for it in 1879.
• The city “took its first step toward earning its reputation as the Electric City” when electric lights were introduced in 1880 at Dickson Locomotive Works.
• Six years later, the nation’s first streetcars powered exclusively by electricity began operating in the city.
• Rev. David Spencer, a local Baptist minister, later proclaimed Scranton as the “Electric City”.
• Present-day Scranton and its surrounding area had been long inhabited by the native Lenape tribe, from whose language “Lackawanna” (or lac-a-wa-na, meaning “stream that forks”), is derived.
• In 1778, Isaac Tripp, the area’s first known European-American settler, built his home here; it still stands in North Scranton, formerly a separate town known as Providence.
• More settlers from Connecticut came to the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries after the American Revolutionary War, as their state claimed this area as part of their colonial charter.
• They gradually established mills and other small businesses in a village that became known as Slocum Hollow.
• People in the village during this time carried the traits and the accent of their New England settlers, which were somewhat different from most of Pennsylvania.
• Some area settlers from Connecticut participated in what was known as the Pennamite Wars, where settlers competed to control the territory which had been included in royal colonial land grants to both states. (This claim between Connecticut and Pennsylvania was settled by negotiation with the federal government after independence.)
• Though anthracite coal was being mined in Carbondale to the north and Wilkes-Barre to the south, the industries that precipitated the city’s early rapid growth were iron and steel.
• In the 1840s, brothers Selden T. and George W. Scranton, who had worked at Oxford Furnace in Belvidere, New Jersey, founded what would become Lackawanna Iron & Coal, later developing as the Lackawanna Steel Company. It initially started producing iron nails, but that venture failed due to low-quality iron.
• The Erie Railroad’s construction in New York State was delayed by its having to acquire iron rails as imports from England.
• The Scrantons’ firm decided to switch focus to producing T-rails for the Erie; the company soon became a major producer of rails for the rapidly expanding railroads.
• In 1851, the Scrantons built the Lackawanna and Western Railroad (L&W) northward, with recent Irish immigrants supplying most of the labor, to meet the Erie Railroad in Great Bend, Pennsylvania. Thus, they could transport manufactured rails from the Lackawanna Valley to New York and the Midwest.
• They also invested in coal mining operations in the city to fuel their steel operations, and to market it to businesses.
• In 1856, they expanded the railroad eastward as the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad (DL&W), to tap into the New York City metropolitan market. This railroad, with its hub in Scranton, would be Scranton’s largest employer for almost one hundred years.
• The Pennsylvania Coal Company built a gravity railroad in the 1850s through the city for the purpose of transporting coal. The gravity railroad was replaced by a steam railroad built in 1886 by the Erie and Wyoming Valley Railroad (later absorbed by the Erie Railroad).
• The Delaware and Hudson (D&H) Canal Company, which had its own gravity railroad from Carbondale to Honesdale, built a steam railroad that entered Scranton in 1863.
• During this short period of time, the city rapidly transformed from a small, agrarian-based village of people with New England roots to a multicultural, industrial-based city.
• From 1860 to 1900, the city’s population increased more than tenfold.
• Most new immigrants, such as the Irish, Italians, and south Germans and Polish, were Catholic, a contrast to the majority-Protestant early settlers of colonial descent.
• National, ethnic, religious and class differences were wrapped into political affiliations, with many new immigrants joining the Democratic Party (and, for a time in the late 1870s, the Greenbacker-Labor Party.)
• The city is the subject of George Inness’s 1855 painting, The Lackawanna Valley, which hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
• The Harry Chapin song “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” is about an actual fatal 1965 accident in Scranton, where a driver hauling bananas lost control of his truck as it barreled down Moosic Street.
• The city is the setting for the fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch on NBC‘s The Office. The Scranton branch is the setting for most of the episodes of the television show.
• The city is imagined as a member of the class of interstellar Okies in James Blish’s 1962 novel, A Life for the Stars, in which 2273 AD Scranton, equipped with a space drive, flies away, and leaves an impoverished Earth behind.

Reference: Kiddle

Scranton ASL & CART Language Interpreters

American Language Services is known for our high-quality, In-person and Virtual interpreters, as well as the outstanding client services we provide. We work in 200+ languages including Legal and Medical Certified and Qualified.  ASL and CART are the fastest growing languages in Scranton today a language interpreter can be a very underestimated professional in the world today. There are over 100 languages spoken in the Scranton Metro area alone. Many of us know one language, and we specialize in one field of study. Our Scranton Interpreters are fluent in English and at least one other language, and they are knowledgeable in a wide range of specialized fields including legal, medical, technical, manufacturing, and engineering.

A brief history of ASL Interpreting in Scranton

Most people know that ASL stands for American Sign Language. But not everyone knows that it is a distinct language—not simply an offshoot of American English. Though its beginnings are murky, many believe that ASL originated from a merger of French Sign Language (SLF) and local U.S. sign languages. While ASL and SLF are distinct languages, there are still some similarities between their signs.

What actually is ASL?   ASL a complete, natural language that has the same linguistic properties as spoken languages with grammar however that differs from English. ASL is expressed by movements of the hands and face.  ASL is a language completely separate and distinct from English. It contains all the fundamental features of language, with its own rules for pronunciation, word formation, and word order.  Because of the physical nature of ASL, a two-person team of ASL interpreters is required for assignments longer than 1 hour in duration.

The National Center for Health Statistics claims that 28 million Americans have some degree of hearing loss, though only between two and eight percent of them are natural ASL speakers.  Helping these select individuals translate the audible into the understandable is the job of an ASL interpreter.  If you have ever been to a play, a concert or watched a government briefing, you have probably seen an ASL interpreter signing just out of view.  An interesting side note is that Statista estimates that there are currently around 60,000 active ASL interpreters in the USA.

The Benefits of ASL Interpreting in Scranton

When it comes to communicating with hard-of-hearing or deaf audiences, there are a few reasons you might want to opt for a Scranton ASL interpreter over CART services. These include:

• A More Personal Connection: A real person has several advantages over a computer screen. First, human interpreters have an easier time conveying emotion. Second, they are better equipped to point out speakers and assist with pronunciation issues. Finally, an interpreter gives a deaf or hard of hearing person a chance to bond with another person.
• Enhanced Speed: Skilled interpreters can hold pace with even the fastest speakers. Lack of delay makes it easier for deaf and hard of hearing individuals to keep up with the conversation.
• Cost Effective:  While costs range by the type of ASL you need (Legal, medical, business, etc.) and when the assignment is scheduled, the cost off ASL, across the board, is less money than CART.

What Is CART?

While the majority of people know what American Sign Language is, the same cannot be said for Communication Access Real-Time Translation. Often referred to as CART, this communication method for the deaf and hard of hearing is best described as subtitling for live discussions. Unlike ASL, which relies on a professional interpreter, CART services are provided by a well-trained stenographer or transcriptionist. They transcribe anything said and then broadcast the resulting text to a phone, computer, or TV screen.

CART is often seen as a cost-effective and efficient way to ensure everybody can follow along. While often used to help deaf students in the classroom, CART captioning benefits anyone that can read.  Much like ASL interpreting, it can be done both onsite with a physical transcriptionist or remotely with an offsite one.

Why You Should Consider CART for the Scranton Market

Communication Access Real-Time Translation is growing in popularity due to the following characteristics:

• It Serves a Wider Array of Deaf People: If you do a little math, you will realize that 65 percent of hard-of-hearing people in the USA do not speak ASL fluently. CART makes it so these people can join in on the conversation as well.
• CART Makes It Scalable: While people in the front rows can easily make out what an interpreter is signing, it gets harder as the distance increases. Since captions can be beamed to multiple screens simultaneously, they do not have to factor speaker distance into the equation.
• The Text Provides a Written Record: Having a transcript of everything your professor said would be a godsend come finals. Having a record of a meeting can also provide clarity to all those involved as well. The physical nature of CART recording makes that possible. This ability is one reason so many college students opt for CART over traditional ASL interpreting. 

About American Language Services

Founded in 1985, American Language Services was there to help pioneer the rise in remote ASL interpreting options. Our dedication to quality and client satisfaction in interpreting allowed us to shift from a one-woman agency into one of the most successful language agencies in the world. Our language experts provide ASL & CART interpreting services to people all around the world. Because of our 24/7 availability, you’ll never have to worry about us not being available, on off times, for an assignment.

AML-Global has some of the most impressive linguistic talents in the world. These highly skilled language professionals are recruited, screened, and tested to ensure high-quality work.

Contact us by email at interpreting@alsglobal.net or via phone at 1-800-951-5020 for a free estimate on our ASL and CART services.