Shoppers at the Queens Center Mall, a shopping mall located in the New York borough of Queens, speak in 150 languages, and merchants are recruiting translators to help them, according to New York Daily News on Tuesday.

So far, Queens Center is the only city megamall that offers translation services with a core of full-time multilinguists and the ability to draw on dozens of mall employees who speak other languages, the paper said.

"It's important and very much needed, especially because of the cultural diversity of Queens," the paper quoted Dawn Simon, the mall's marketing director, as saying.

"Over 150 languages are spoken here. What better way to connect with shoppers than to speak their language?"

The shopping mall launched the Foreign Language Assistance Program more than 10 years ago. It also maintains a directory of multilingual employees at the 70 shops, whose owners have okayed to translate for visitors with questions about the mall.

Morning Glory, a gift shop, gets a boom of Korean-speaking shoppers thanks to employee Jae Han, 36, helping translate.

"If you can speak more languages, you can be more successful," said Chris Figueroa, 22, who speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

According to the paper, the mall is the most profitable one, per square foot, in the United States.

(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2007)