After nearly three months and millions of gallons of oil, it looks like the leak in the Gulf of Mexico may finally stop gushing. While BP’s blunders have caused untold damage to the environment, its failure to provide language services continues to put human life at risk.

As the American public looked in horror at countless images of oil-soaked birds, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was looking out for vulnerable populations of human beings. Specifically, her office complained that BP was not providing limited English proficient workers with proper training in their native languages to help them understand how to properly handle contaminants.

Solis isn’t the only government official drawing attention to BP’s failings in the language arena. Joseph Cao, a congressman from Louisiana, has complained both to BP and to federal agencies about the notable lack of bilingual staff and interpreters who can communicate with the area’s diverse population.

Why are interpreters so critical? Approximately 40,000 Southeast Asians live in the Gulf Coast region, making a living by fishing, packing shrimp, shucking oysters, and working in hotels and restaurants. About a third of all fishermen in the gulf are Vietnamese. The region is also home to many Spanish speakers.

Because of the lack of language access, many of these workers are unable to obtain basic information on topics such as how to assist with the clean-up effort or how to make a claim for relief. While BP has made an attempt to provide some interpreters, there aren’t enough to help everyone who needs language assistance, and in some cases, BP has provided interpreters that do not even speak the same dialect of Vietnamese as the local residents.

We wondered if BP has as many challenges with language issues on a global scale as it apparently does on a local one. After all, BP is the fourth-largest corporation in the world and sells its products and services in more than 100 countries — including Vietnam. Yet, if you visit any of its country-specific websites, you’ll be hard-pressed to find content in any language other than English. Building global websites this way is a worst practice, as our research on global website gateways points out.

However, we did locate an online claims submission form in Vietnamese — which you can get to from the main Gulf of Mexico response page. That is, assuming that you speak enough English to navigate to that part of the website to begin with. And, assuming that you’re on the web at all, which may not be the case for many members of the affected population — especially older generations.

The lesson for BP, and for any other firm that operates in multiple countries? If you want to build a successful global business that can weather even the toughest storms, you must be able to communicate with your customers — and your employees — no matter what their native languages.