TIS - Translating and Interpreting Service
Along with such inventions of the Flying Doctor Service (providing medical services to remote locations) and
the School of the Air (broadcasting school programs to students), Australia has also led the world in innovative
ways to combat the problems of distance and location in linguistic needs: Australia was the inventor of telephone
interpreting, establishing it in 1973 as the federal-government funded Emergency Telephone Interpreter Service.
This service was introduced to meet a rapidly expanding need to provide interpreting to Australia's growing
migrant population and their interactions with Australian institutions - health, welfare, legal, administrative
contacts of all kinds. So great was the ensuing demand, that the 'Emergency' was dropped from the name the
following year, and the service has been known as simply TIS to this day. It meets over half a million
interpreting requests a year in a multitude of languages.
Telephone interpreting was slowly adopted by other countries, but in recent decades with advances in telephony,
such interpreting has become part of the function of many interpreting agencies. This has been a significant
example of innovation and expertise in an area of Translating and Interpreting. TIS also funds a small
translation service for settlement and personal documents for newly arrived immigrants in Australia.
Meaningful Exchange's translation expertise covers far more extensive areas of technical, administrative and
specialised translation, sourcing translators both in Australia and overseas for their experience and
credentials in a variety of technical fields. We have satisfied clients' needs in many commercial and
technical areas, from company reports to advertising campaigns, from engineering to medical biology.
We have
had long association with several medical research institutions where we have translated material for
pharmacological research, orthopaedics, and diagnostic and evaluation instruments. We have considerable
experience in using such features as back-translations or focus groups for designated translations, and our
translation managers can rapidly advise on suitability of texts and appropriate translation methodology for
your needs.
