An Account of Rejection due to Linguistic Barrier

A Greek woman employed as a travel consultant asked her team leader for leave on a particular Friday for religious and cultural reasons, as Greek Orthodox Good Friday did not coincide with the Easter weekend public holidays. She alleged that her team leader laughed at her request, said ‘You are in Australia and should celebrate Australian Easter’, told her that if she was unhappy about this she should ‘go back to her own country’ and made fun of her surname by calling it ‘the alphabet’. 

This Greek woman was discriminated against due to the cultural barrier between her and her teammates. This was worsened by the fact that the company failed to provide translation services. As a result of both the cultural and linguistic barriers, she was denied the holiday. 

An Account of Racial Profiling

A man claimed that a staff member at a supermarket checked his bag on the way out because of his race and skin colour. The supermarket stated that it is a condition of entry that customers may be randomly asked to have their bags checked and that the race or skin colour of customers are not factors in the random selection of customers for bag checks. 

An Account of Verbal Abuse

Two Nigerian men were employed as factory workers with a manufacturing company. They alleged that their supervisor made racially derogatory comments towards them such as “black idiot”, “you eat like a monkey” and “go back to Africa”. They also alleged that he verbally and physically threatened them.

An Account of Lack of access to Proper Healthcare

 A Mexican woman went to the local medical clinic. Due to the low funds of the clinic, she was without a translator, and thus unable to properly communicate the problems she was facing with her health.

The impacts of language barriers on patients include preventable medical errors, low treatment adherence, low health-seeking behaviour and so on.