According to the Provincial Health Services Authority , the top three languages that are needed for interpretation in the medical field in British Columbia are Mandarin, Cantonese and Punjabi.
Director of Provincial Language Service Kiran Malli that is the trend in the lower mainland, but things change throughout the province with a completely different number one here in the interior. “It depends, and I would say for [the Kamloops area], Arabic is definitely number one and then it moves on to Cantonese is the second one…. Cantonese is still strong out in that area, but Arabic seems to be the top language. And there’s just a wide array of languages from Khmer, which is from Cambodia, to Italian. So it’s just little pockets.”
Malli says it’s a bit of a snapshot into what the migration habits are into different parts of the province. “And that’s definitely reflective of the refugees that might be coming into the country and settling in BC.” She adds it currently does not provide indigenous language services, but notes that service does exist in Williams Lake.