When I first saw information that Translators without Borders was looking for a volunteer trainer to provide MemoQ training in Nairobi, Kenya, my first thought was, “Wow, Kenya in January.” Then I found the TWB web page and read about the organization’s mission and goals. I decided that I could afford to give up a week’s earnings and provide some free work instead, so I volunteered. I wasn’t the only one, but in the end I was selected for the job.
The TWB goal is to support humanitarian work around the world by providing translation of all kinds of information into local languages, with one emphasis being on medical and healthcare texts. One of the organization’s goals in Kenya is to provide healthcare information for everybody; how to recognize malaria, how to avoid HIV infection, what to do when someone has a seizure, how to avoid risks during pregnancy. While this kind of information may seem like general knowledge to most of us, it is not so in the poorer regions of world, and providing it to people in their native language markedly lowers the access barriers and helps to save lives.
To achieve its goal TWB employs a growing host of volunteer translators, but there is also a team of translators working in Nairobi, Kenya, translating into local African languages – at the moment mainly into Swahili. Since the need is great and the budget is tight, one of the important factors in the translation process is efficiency. One of the best ways to improve the efficiency of translation is to employ translation memory technology (computer aided translation, CAT tools) and terminology management. The basic idea behind CAT tools is that once you translate a sentence, it is being stored in a special database called a translation memory (TM), and when you encounter the same sentence in another text, you can use this previous translation. TMs can also help with similar sentences and it is easy to look for previous translations of words and phrases (concordance). Kilgray Translation Technologies, the Hungarian company behind memoQ, an excellent, user-friendly and powerful CAT software, donated some licenses for the TWB team in Nairobi, but since the people who were supposed to use the tool had no previous experience with that kind of software, some training was required. And that’s where I came in.
The training took five days, 6 hours a day (not counting breaks). While the people I trained displayed relatively high levels of “computer literacy”, they never used any specialized translation software, so we started with an introduction to CAT tools and explanation of concepts like a segment, translation memory, match, etc. Then came the use of memoQ itself – we went through project creation, translation, quality assurance and generation of translated files in target format. Thanks to some previously translated files we were able to practice LiveDocs corpora creation and alignment procedures, translation memory export and import, work with term bases (including import of previously collected glossaries) and terminology extraction. At first everybody was working on the same files, later the group was divided into teams, with every team working on different files, then exchanging the results of their work to pool the resources. The teams were also practicing translation-review-verification workflow: a translation by a team was handed to another team for review and then was imported back to verify and accept/reject the changes using the track changes function. The review was conducted both in memoQ (using .mqxlz files) and in Word (with bilingual RTF tables).
The group consisted of people with different backgrounds, but most of them were linguists and they usually knew more than just two languages – some of them even six or seven. There were translators with some experience on the job and some people who were preparing to strengthen their ranks. While their translation was relatively slow, they treated all the exercises very seriously and I’m confident that they gained a good understanding of how to effectively use memoQ to improve and speed-up their work. Even during the week I noticed a marked improvement in the translation speed, which may have had to do in part with the growing confidence, but also with the use of available resources: corpora, translation memories and term bases.
In fact, after my return, I have stayed in touch with the group, and I have learned that they have benefited greatly from using memoQ. It is helping them with several big projects, including the 100×100 Wikipedia project and the HEAT community healthcare training content. It was even helpful to them earlier this month when they led the effort to translate 39,000 SMS messages from citizens around the country during and after the Kenyan elections in an effort to make sure all voices were heard.
My week there was very busy, but I’m very satisfied with what we did, and I hope the results will be long-lasting and beneficial to everyone involved, but mostly to the people who will receive more information in their native languages, helping them to improve the quality of their lives. And as always when conducting a training I learned a lot – as every trainer knows, each day of training brings new questions and new way of looking at the things one thought one already knew inside-out, leading to better understanding of the subject. And since it was the first time I visited Africa, it was also an incredible experience for me – while there was no time for anything but work during the week, on Saturday I was kindly invited for a tour through Nairobi National Park and some other tourist attractions, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I’d like to give my thanks to all the people who made it possible for me to go there: Rebecca Petras and Simon Andriesen from Translators without Borders for choosing me, Paul Warambo—manager of the training center in Nairobi—for the warm welcome and great support on site and all the participants of the training for putting a lot of effort into learning completely new things.
I would also like to express my thanks to everyone who volunteered for this job and to Kilgray Translation Technology company, which not only kindly donated licenses for TWB, but also funded my plane ticket to Nairobi.