We proudly serve a diverse range of healthcare organizations, including large medical systems, hospitals, community health centers, and nonprofits dedicated to healthcare services. Our clients, such as Kaiser Permanente Northern California and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, benefit from our industry-leading expertise, specialized training programs, and comprehensive consulting services.
Our expertise ensures that healthcare professionals have the skills to communicate accurately and effectively with diverse patient populations, reducing the risk of critical misunderstandings. By using qualified interpreters, organizations can significantly lower medical errors, reduce costs, decrease readmission rates, and improve patient outcomes.
Under the Affordable Care Act requirements, a “qualified” interpreter is proficient in English and at least one other language, understands the necessary medical terminology, and adheres to ethical standards. Healthcare providers must use skilled professionals, not under-trained bilingual staff, to avoid poor patient outcomes for Limited English Proficient (LEP) individuals.
CCC’s dynamic training empowers healthcare organizations to comply with legal and accreditation standards while adhering to national best practices. Our programs help protect against liability and foster a more inclusive environment where all patients can fully understand their care and treatment options.
Qualified staff interpreters ensure accurate & ethical communication in high-stakes situations, reducing errors, improving outcomes, and maintaining compliance across medical, legal, and community settings.
Reduce reliance on external resources and build an internal team of qualified staff or volunteers capable of delivering ongoing language and cultural competence training.
Address the full spectrum of language access needs, including interpreter training, multilingual resources, communication policies and procedures, compliance strategies, and more.
Receive expert guidance on best practices, online training solutions, remote interpreting, cultural mediation, and more, as you implement and refine language access and cultural competence solutions across your organization.
We’re on a mission to empower organizations to deliver equitable, high-quality care to all patients, regardless of language or cultural background. We work with a range of clients — from local to international, private to public, and nonprofit to for-profit — to train bilingual staff and improve care.
We offer online, on-site, and interactive workshops that can be customized to fit the needs of your staff or volunteers. Build your own training program for maximum convenience, or access our existing courses through licensing agreements for ongoing staff development.
As pioneers in language access solutions, we provide consulting, technical assistance, and ongoing support to help organizations improve service delivery, implement best practices, ensure compliance, and more. Whether you’re starting from scratch or improving existing operations, we can be your guide.
Our signature Cultural Competence training is fun, simple, and EFFECTIVE. Grounded in national standards and best practices, it equips service providers, frontline staff, and interpreters with practical tools to navigate cultural and linguistic diversity. We also offer Training of Trainers so your staff can sustain this vital work from within.
We develop curricula for a variety of needs, including staff or volunteer training programs, custom Training of Trainers, conference workshops, and more. We create programs that equip your team with the skills and knowledge they need to effectively serve diverse populations.
Most recently, CCC conducted a three-day Cultural Competence in Health and Human Services Training of Trainers (TOT) session for 25 participants. The program provided trainers with a comprehensive toolkit — everything from instructional resources to expert-led guidance — ensuring they were fully prepared to deliver the training within their own organizations. By the end of the session, participants left not only with practical tools but also with the confidence and capacity to build cultural competence across their teams and communities.
In 2024, we designed and delivered four one-day Introduction to Community Interpreting Workshops for bilingual staff. Designed for up to 25 participants per session, each workshop was led by a highly qualified trainer and based on a nationally recognized model established in 2015. The program offered organizations a reliable entry point for interpreter training, reinforcing their capacity to serve multilingual communities with greater clarity and confidence.
CCC delivered The Community Interpreter® International 40-hour training to 24 bilingual community health workers. Led by experienced trainers, this two-cohort course emphasized professional interpreting standards and real-world healthcare applications—preparing participants to navigate clinical conversations, advocate effectively, and support equitable care delivery.
Cross Cultural Communications facilitated a Training of Trainers (TOT) session for The Community Interpreter® International program. Participants received advanced instruction and tools to train others, becoming licensed to train medical, educational and social services interpreters in their communities and advance language access to critical communities in need.
CCC provided a customized Medical Terminology Training of Trainers program to MUSC, equipping participants with the expertise and resources necessary to train others in medical terminology. This initiative aimed to enhance communication with LEP patients, ultimately improving medical outcomes and ensuring better patient care.
Barton Health sought assistance incorporating trauma-informed care into its services. CCC delivered The Trauma-Informed Interpreter training, equipping interpreters with techniques to approach trauma-sensitive scenarios with sensitivity and care.
CCC conducted How to Work with an Interpreter training sessions for Department of Health staff, equipping them with best practices for collaborating with interpreters in medical and public health settings. By strengthening these skills, the training helped state workers provide more inclusive, accessible, and effective care to Maryland’s diverse communities.
We delivered The Community Interpreter® International training, equipping staff interpreters with the skills and knowledge to effectively communicate with LEP patients. The training covered essential topics such as medical terminology, cultural competency, and interpreter best practices, empowering staff to provide inclusive, high-quality healthcare to the diverse communities they serve.
CCC led Medical Interpreter Ground Rounds: Advocacy & Mediation for Medical Interpreters. Through this training, interpreters gained a deeper understanding of what advocacy is — and isn’t — empowering them to support patients effectively within their full scope of practice. By reinforcing their role in patient education and communication, we helped ensure safer, more equitable healthcare interactions for all.
To become an interpreter, you must be at least 18 years old, possess a high school diploma or equivalent, and be bilingual. Since we're based in the United States, where English is the primary language of service, one of your working languages must be English. Increasingly, the industry standard requires interpreters to have completed a 40-hour certificate program, at a minimum, before being able to work as an interpreter.
CCC recommends that participants first strengthen their non-native language before taking our programs. Some options for language training are: community colleges, online programs such as Rosetta Stone, conversation groups (such as free groups sponsored by public libraries), etc.
Interpreting is an expanding sector of the job market due to several factors. There is a high percentage of foreign-born people in the U.S. seeking access to publicly funded services such as health care, social services and education. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (signed in 1964) any organization receiving one dollar of federal funding must not discriminate on the basis of national origin and must make reasonable efforts to provide this access. Therefore, if a public school system serves a large Korean population they must provide Korean interpreting (and translation) services free of charge. Health care organizations are increasingly using medical certified interpreters after several high-profile medical malpractice lawsuits resulted from either no interpreter being present or untrained bilingual staff or family members being used to interpret.
It depends on the type of interpreting you’re doing and what type of interpreter you are. In general, there are three types of interpreters, volunteer interpreters (such as those who interpret at places of worship or at clinics for low-income patients), bilingual staff (employees such as nurses, case workers and psychologists who are asked to interpret in addition to their main job) and contract/freelance interpreters. Contract interpreters typically work for several organizations, either directly with the client or through a language agency. They drive to different locations and pay varies according to the assignment and employer. At the moment, local public school systems tend to pay on the lower end of the interpreting scale, while pay will be higher for medical and legal interpreters and highest of all for certified medical interpreters and court-certified interpreters.
Medical certified interpreters have passed one of the two national certification exams (see below). They have different formats but both are equally valid and accepted. Only certain languages are available at the moment (such as Spanish and Mandarin) but others are in development. Among current pre-requisites is 40 hours of medical/health care interpreter training. The best way to get information about how to prepare for medical interpreter certification is to go to the websites of the two national medical interpreter certification programs:
CCHI at http://www.healthcareinterpretercertification.org/
NBCMI at http://www.certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org/
Court certified interpreters have passed an exam given by a state or federal interpreter certification program. These exams usually have extremely low pass rates. At the federal level, only Spanish is currently offered. Certification exams vary at the state level for other languages.
A certificate is awarded upon successful completion of an academic or non-academic program. For interpreter training programs, language proficiency testing may or may not be a requisite for successful completion of the program. A certification can only be awarded by local, state or federal authorities (such as the community interpreter certification in Washington state; state and federal court certification; and the two national medical interpreter certifications). CCC offers certificate programs.
No, CCC is an organization dedicated solely to interpreter and cultural competence training. Our mission is language access. However, we do provide graduates of The Community Interpreter® with a list of nearby language companies and public organizations that employ interpreters. We also occasionally send out job postings to our program graduates and/or e-newsletter subscribers at the request of other organizations.
Cross-Cultural Communications is the leading international training agency in the U.S. devoted to community interpreting, educational interpreting, healthcare interpreting and cultural competence. It is also the only organization that licenses community interpreters across the U.S. and in other countries. We regularly train bilingual staff as well as contract interpreters. We also provide training and consulting services to private companies, non-profits and government agencies. Our programs are grounded in a mixture of theory and practical, hands-on activities.
The Community Interpreter® International, or TCII, is a 40-hour certificate training program for interpreters who are just starting out or those experienced interpreters who are looking for a recognized qualification. Subjects covered include the interpreting code of ethics and standards of practice in order to give participants a solid grounding in the profession. This is complemented by practical, hands-on activities such as role-plays and interactive group discussions. The program fulfills the 40-hour training requirements considered by many (certifying bodies employers and industry associations) to be the minimum needed to entire the field.
At the moment, a combination of two CCC programs fulfills this requirement: Medical Terminology for Interpreters (7.5 hours) and The Community Interpreter® International. Since TCII is open to all community interpreters and the subject matter covers education and social services as well as medical interpreting, at the end of each TCII session any participant who is seeking medical interpreter certification will be given a letter from CCC, stating the number of hours that can be counted towards this requirement. Typically 34-36 hours count towards the 40 hour requirement.
Yes, although the CE credits offered for each program will vary according to course length and content. Our programs are currently approved for continuing education credits by the following organizations:
Yes…but it’s also so much more! The Community Interpreter® International was designed to address any one of, or all of, three target audiences: medical, educational and/or social services interpreters. Some of our trainers and we ourselves present all-medical sessions that include medical terminology training and others gear their programs to general community interpreting or a specialized audience, like educational interpreting. Our TCII sessions are hosted both in a live online training context and via our self-paced learning platform. They cover medical, educational and social services interpreting.
CCC hosts sessions of The Community Interpreter® International as a live training seasonally. along with many other programs. See our current training offerings.
The Community Interpreter® Online (TCIO) is the self-guided, online version of The Community Interpreter® International and includes open, ongoing enrollment. Learn more about TCIO.
Our licensed trainers also host their own trainings across 44 U.S. states, Washington DC, Guam and six other countries. Search for a trainer near you.
Live online trainings of The Community Interpreter® International currently cost $550.
The course fee includes:
The Community Interpreter Online self-paced course currently costs $390. Sign up here: https://courses.cultureandlanguage.net/ccc_english/the-community-interpreter-online.html
Sessions of The Community Interpreter® hosted by our licensed trainers will vary in cost depending on the location and session.
No. A training program certificate is not the same as certification. In fact, in the U.S. the certificate for a 40-hour training program is a prerequisite to apply for national medical interpreter certification. In The Community Interpreter® we teach you about the difference between a certificate and certification. A good training is the beginning of certification, not the end, because after training you will need to take the written and oral exams of a properly credentialed certification program to become certified.
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