Author: Translators without Borders

If you were to write a brief wiki article about yourself, what facts and personal characteristics would you include?

I’m Argentine; I was born in a town, which I had to leave to pursue my graduate studies. I hold a degree in translation studies from Universidad de la Plata. Because of my profession, I have always wanted to travel, so as to practice the language, to get to know different people, their cultures. After visiting the United States, I decided to travel to Europe, and for me, Europe meant London! This is the city where I actually live, and where I originally came to strengthen my language skills – and, three years ago, where I found love. I travelled from the other side of the world to fall in love with an Argentine here! I work for the Argentine Embassy, in the Administrative and Legal Affairs Department. I get translation assignments now and then. This job lets me be in contact with a lot of people from my home country, of course; so I’m still in touch with my culture.

What is your role at TWB?

I’m in charge of bookkeeping; in fact my role is to assist Françoise, who is the Treasurer, to register monetary transactions. At first, I registered with Translators without Borders to be a volunteer translator, but I guess my language combination (English <> Spanish) is not as requested as often as language pairs, so I felt I was not being as active as I would have liked. I heard that TWB was looking for someone to help in this position, and this role gave me an opportunity to participate more actively.

What has motivated you to help TWB?

Due to my profession, as a translator, I started to look around at what was going on in the translation industry. I am a true believer in Translators without Borders’ cause. I believe information can save lives; I believe in the power of the word and the power of communication. It feels good to contribute to a cause that is quite related to my profession and that I believe in. As my current position in the Embassy involves being in charge of administration, I felt I had the expertise to do the same for TWB.

How is a day in your life like?

Well, I have regular office hours, a 9-to-5 job. Here in London, days seem so short! Perhaps it has to do with the hustle and bustle of city life, I don’t know. After work, we sometimes go out with friends; I try to keep a gym routine (with no success at all!); I devote myself to volunteering tasks and maybe a couple of translation assignments. My favorite moment of the day is to prepare some mates (a typical Argentine beverage made up of herbs and hot water, usually to share with friends) to share with my boyfriend and to talk about our day.

How do you squeeze in time for your volunteer tasks?

I don’t really have a routine or any scheduled time. I just do it whenever I can. My role mainly involves communications via e-mail – which I can complete in any spare moment, even at work – everything is through the Internet. If the task is more time-consuming, I set aside some time during the evening or some Saturday or Sunday morning. It doesn’t feel like a job to me; I really enjoy it.

What do you consider are the challenges ahead for your role and for TWB?

Translators without Borders is growing fast, and it’s good that it does. This means more volume, more tasks, more issues to cope with. All these are positive indicators; it means we are achieving our goals. It’s good to face challenges.

What would you say to someone who is thinking about joining a cause like TWB?

Just do it; it is worthwhile. I don’t consider it a job; it’s a contribution. It makes me feel good with myself. Even if the contribution is small, it can definitely make the difference for other people and it’s a huge satisfaction for oneself. There are so many different areas and aspects where people can offer their volunteer job in Translators without Borders, and anything counts.

Could you tell us a bit about team work and personal relationships with other members of TWB?

Françoise brought order and a system in relation to TWB’s administration. There are so many responsibilities. We are in contact all the time. I’m also in contact with Rebecca and Anne-Marie. Even when we are located in so many different parts of the world, I feel part of this team – they make me feel part of the team. They’ve always been so supportive; they allow me freedom to work. It feels great to belong to TWB’s team.

What do you feel is your greatest achievement within TWB and beyond TWB so far and what is your biggest dream in life?

Mmm…. No particular landmark comes to my mind right now; instead I think of everyday achievements and efforts.  As to my personal life, of course I’d love to be a successful translator, but my biggest dream is to have a beautiful and happy family. That would be my perfect picture of personal accomplishment.

Target shooting

In paper: Just anything; variety is the spice of life.

On the web: Not a Web fan, but a little bit of social media to have some fun!

Open-air activity: Whenever I can, I go walking, especially along the riverside.

With friends: Dinner and great conversation.

Family gathering: Christmas for sure! I miss spending Christmas with my family in Argentina.

Translators without Borders supports partner non-profits around the world.  Hear about our work for them in their words. Two new testimonials were just received:

Luckson Soda, Principal, Development Aid From People to People (Zimbabwe):

“We proudly write this letter to express our sincere appreciation of the good work that you are undertaking concerning the translation of our English study materials into Portuguese. We are glad to inform you that the translated tasks are so beneficial in our training programs for the young cadres who are studying how they can be world activists in the world full of injustice. We also extend the many greetings from our Frontline Institute school in Angola who are benefiting a lot from the translated tasks. May such efforts continue to prevail forever.”

Niels Peter Rygaard, Clinical Psychologist , Fair Start Project Expert

“My personal thanks to leaders and members of Translators without Borders for translating the orphan caregiver education program www.fairstartglobal.com  into so many languages…the work done by Translators without Borders is an invaluable professional support in qualifying care for orphans throughout the world. It is especially important to present the education in local languages, since many orphan caregivers only speak their native language, and local versions will give them access to knowledge so far inaccessible, in their work to help some of the 200,000,000 World orphans. This is only possible due to your volunteer efforts.”

 

Translators without Borders will be represented at the following events:

 

ATC 2013 Conference (London) 26 – 27 September

TMT Congress (The Hague) 27 September

Proz.com 2013 Virtual Conference (Online) 30 September – 4 October

Localization World (Santa Clara) 9 – 11 October

TriKonf Translation Conference (Freiburg) 18 – 19 October

International Translation Technology Terminology Conference (Zadar) 25 – 26 October

Tcworld (Wiesbaden) 6 – 8 November

54^th Annual ATA Conference (San Antonio) 6 – 9 November

Nordic Translation Industry Forum (Stockholm) 21 – 22 November

Activity

After peaking in May and June, the activity in the Translators without Borders (TWB) Workspace – powered by ProZ.com – has stabilized at a still impressive level. The words processed between May and November averaged 502K words per month, a rate equivalent to 6 M words per year. This contrasts with previous averages of 236 K words in the 5 previous months and a monthly average of 202 K words during all of 2011.

Since January 2011 our volunteer translators have delivered 7.1 million words. During the last 12 months our workspace processed 4.70 million words and delivered 4.35 million words. Due to the time needed for the translations, the number of words delivered lags slightly behind the number of words processed.

Translators

The team of professionals approved by Translators without Borders reached 1600 by the end of November 2012, with a growth of 200 translators during the last 3 months. This growth and the stabilization of demand momentarily took off some pressure from our mainstream language pairs.

We still have excess capacity in English to Spanish, our most populated pair, while we have pressing needs in non-European languages, especially those used in Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Our top-five volunteers are: boulderwords, who has donated an amazing 123,812 words, followed by eric ragu (80,522 words), gail desautels (71,624 words), Edgar Marie-Hélène Cadieux (68,920 words) and Nellie K. Adaba (65,212 words).

Language pairs

During the last 12 months our translators accepted volunteer assignments in 84 language pairs. Top language pair was English to French, representing 20.7% of the operation. The next three pairs were French to English (18.8%), English to Spanish (8.2%) and Spanish to English (4.2%).

Overall the languages beyond the top four represented 48.1% of the total, up from 32.9% during 2011. This number is important because it shows the degree of ‘linguistic spread’ of the operation, as we strive to move beyond the main European languages to those used by the people most in need of translation help.

This ‘linguistic spread index’ looks better if you perform a month-by-month analysis. The next figure shows that the ‘rest of languages’ (green line) are growing faster than the top languages, and that they represented more processed words than the ‘top 4′ in June and in the last recorded months.

Clients

A total of 92 humanitarian organizations requested our services during the last 12 months.

At the top of the list is the Wikipedia project, launched this year with the Wikimedia Foundation to translate 80 critical medical Wikipedia articles into as many languages as possible. The project is currently active into 35 languages and in a first step we aim for 80 languages.

Next in line come Acción contra el Hambre from Spain and Action contre la Faim, two branches of the same humanitarian NGO dedicated to fighting hunger. Then comes Médecins Sans Frontières from Switzerland. MSF was Translators without Borders first humanitarian client and in the last 12 months we also received translations requests from their offices based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, the UK, United Arab Emirates, France, Canada, Japan and Norway.

Translators without Borders (TWB) frequently announces donations received from various companies, but what about the huge amount of help that we get from dedicated individuals who do incredible things to raise money through their creativity and hard work? What can you do as an individual to raise money and support us, and what could that amount achieve? This part of the newsletter provides a space for our innovative fundraisers to showcase their fundraising projects, and highlights the ways in which other people can get involved in creative and fun ways to raise money to really make a difference.

One of the main ways that individuals can support us is by raising money for the Fund-a-Translator program, whereby $1,000 will provide a translator’s training, equipment and Internet connection for a period of one year. This single translator’s work may then help save hundreds of lives.

Supporters from Text Partner in Poland did just that. Marek Gawrysiak and Lucjan Szreter cycled 440 kilometers in four days, from their branch office in Katowice, Poland, to the ELIA conference in Budapest to raise money to fund the training of two Kenyan translators. The ways in which the public could help support the bike ride were either through sponsoring as many kilometers as possible, or by spreading the word about the charity.

The company created a dedicated webpage through which donations could be made directly, and also encouraged people to raise awareness of the ride and the charity through social media, providing links to the TWB Twitter page. There was also the functionality to share the bike ride story directly on Facebook and Twitter. The page was complete with a sponsorship progress bar where the amount raised could be tracked, and companies and individuals were able to leave comments of encouragement.

What worked so well about this idea was that a goal was set of raising enough to sponsor two Kenyan trainee translators for a year, and it seemed to help people understand the importance of donating to this cause. The donation process was made incredibly straight forward, and the company linked the donations to a set amount of kilometers. Obviously, this also encouraged the riders to keep on going.

Gawrysiak and his team did indeed reach their goal of raising the $2,000 target, which demonstrates how every penny really does add up. Gawrysiak would like to underline that they owe special thanks to Raymund Prins from Global Textware, the Netherlands, who was one of the “masterminds” of the ride but, unfortunately, could not take part in it himself. His company was also one of the sponsors. Owing to the success of the first bike ride and the public’s growing interest in their initiative, Gawrysiak and his team are embarking on another fundraising ride across five countries, starting May 30 2013, and finishing on June 2, covering a total of 600 kilometers. Throughout the journey they will be talking to local media about the Fund-a-Translator program, and they are encouraging others to join in the ride or to provide support vehicles.

Gawrysiak commented that “I am more than happy to see that so many people are willing to engage in our initiative. It is great fun after all! And I really hope our next ride is going to be even more successful than the first, turning the ‘biking idea’ into a regular, fund-raising event.”

For more information on the bike ride, to sign up to their newsletter, or to bite the bullet and join in part of the next bike ride, go to www.onourbikes.info. For more information on the Fund-a-Translator program go to http://translatorswithoutborders.org/Fund-a-Translator.

The Text Partner bike ride is just one of the creative ways people in our industry are helping us reach our goal of more humanitarian content available in more languages.  Several individuals have run matching campaigns on Twitter, supporters in Argentina collected funds at an event, GeoGlobal in North America donates every time a customer returns a feedback survey, Moravia donates every time the company’s fun video is watched, and SDL offers funds when the company’s holiday card is opened.  And so many more! Next time we will highlight the creative social hour set up by the Nordic Translation Industry Forum in honor of Translators without Borders.

Two tracks for the Wikipedia project

The Wikipedia project has already delivered 183 translations of health care articles into 25 languages, and 113 of these articles are already live in their local versions of Wikipedia, with very strong contributions in languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Persian and Tagalog, to name just a few.

In order to streamline this project, languages have been divided into two tracks. The day-to-day management of the languages in full roll-out has been entrusted to a new translation coordinator, volunteer Ildikó Santana, current language lead of the Wikipedia translation into Hungarian.

A second track for languages with partial roll-out will focus on adding new languages to the project. Volunteers are more than welcome, especially in languages of Africa and Asia.

The fast-track path into Translators without Borders

Volunteer translators form the very core of Translators without Borders. They donate their time, efforts and expertise to help doctors, nurses and other volunteers working in humanitarian organizations to make the world a better place.

Since translations related to humanitarian emergencies leave no time for reviews or mistakes, there is a strict procedure in place to ensure that all members of our team are experienced and solid translators, able to do it right the first time. Applications from potential volunteers are reviewed and, if approved, a sample translation is requested and then evaluated by at least two editors before a new translator is welcomed onto the team.

There is a second way, called the fast track, opened back in early 2011 when Translators without Borders was contacted by the organization GoodPlanet with the request of translating their new website into as many languages as possible. Since at that time the pool of volunteers was concentrated in the pairs of English to and from French, a decision was made to contact members of ProZ.com’s Certified PRO Network.

With over 3,400 members, the ProZ.com Certified PRO Network is an initiative of the ProZ.com community to provide qualified translators and translation companies with an opportunity to network and collaborate in an environment consisting entirely of screened professionals.

To enter the Certified PRO Network, ProZ.com members must complete an online application and submit it for review to prove they meet or exceed minimum professional standards based on the EN15038 standard for quality in translation and in three screening areas: translation ability, business reliability and online citizenship.

Since the screening of translation ability is essentially the same in both programs (and in both cases done on a platform powered by ProZ.com), a fast track was created whereby any translator who is part of the ProZ.com Certified PRO Network is automatically accepted as a Translator without Borders without the need of any further testing.

The fast track proved very powerful, and currently some 40% of the professionals approved by Translators without Borders were accepted because of their ProZ.com Certified PRO Network status.

The experience led to the decision to extend this approach to other industry certifications that involve active testing of translation abilities. In particular, the fast track benefits are also available to all ATA-certified translators—an opportunity that we would like to advertise better. We are working on identifying similar certification programs and announcing those fast track opportunities to potential volunteers.

There is good room for growth here. Feedback and advice will be very welcome.

Announce your contributions in your project history

There is nothing wrong in getting some good promotion for your generous contributions to Translators without Borders. If you have a ProZ.com profile, you can enter your contributions as part of your project history.

Once there, you should provide a short description of the project, indicate the language pair, field of expertise, date completed, volume in words translated and optionally a public comment. Then identify Translators without Borders as the client by entering User ID = 1352791, select the option to “submit to the outsourcer for corroboration and feedback” and click on “Submit.”

Translators without Borders will verify the data and corroborate your claim, and this will look good in your profile when it is visited by a potential client.

Since the end of July, the Translators without Borders (TWB) Healthcare Translators’ Training Center has been fully operational. Based on the lessons learned during the pilot test in April, we have revised our model. We changed the recruitment procedure, and also the training methods. We currently select people with strong Swahili language skills and provide basic medical information to make them familiar with health-related issues. After the training phase, trainees move into actual translation.

By now, the team consists of 13 fully trained translators/editors; almost half of them have a health background, the others have a language background. Those translators who have a health background make sure the linguists fully understand what they are translating.

Since July, the center has been located in the Upper Hill area of Nairobi, on the campus of the Bible Translation and Literacy (BTL) organization (also the home of the East Africa HQ of SIL, the developers of the Ethnologue). In January 2013 we will move from an annex on the campus into the main building. The translators will keep working on the translation of lots of healthcare material, and in February we will start training a new group.

Looking back, we have had a very good year in Kenya. In early March we had nothing. After the pilot in April we spent a great deal of time incorporating the lessons into a revised model. In July we were ready for a new start and everything that we have accomplished until now is the result of six months of hard work by many.

One of the courses we did was a series of short introductory lessons in Medical Translation to around 100 people in April 2011. Some of the participants have mentioned how much they benefited from the training. One good example is that of Sister Perpetua Nyakundi, who develops information about how to prevent and treat infectious eye diseases such as trachoma. A few months after the course she wrote a note to us:

“Thank you for the skills I received during the training. I have so far designed, developed and produced user-friendly information on trachoma in Maasai, Pokot and Turkana. I also produced the same on Cataract in Luo. These are already in circulation and in demand. Thank you for empowering me.”

When I contacted her to thank her for this message, Sister Perpetua commented that our introduction to translation, which highlighted that health information must be easy to understand, made her aware that a lot of the information she had been using was far too complex and therefore not easily accessible. She successfully chased funding and developed new materials. Her “thank you for empowering me” was especially gratifying to hear, as empowerment is exactly what we are aiming to do.

Model can be used in other parts of Africa

Africa is of course much larger than Kenya. Yet we will continue our focus on Kenya and on Swahili, as Swahili is the lingua franca for probably over 100 million people in the Eastern part of Africa. It is an area characterized by the combination of wide-spread poverty, poor public health and a health care system that is inadequate for many people. Also, it typically only has health information in English, which is not the appropriate language to reach most people. Empowering people to translate such materials will prove to have a life-saving effect. Our training model is constantly being evaluated so that eventually it can be used in other areas in Africa, or in other parts of the world, by TWB or by others.

Many thanks

Many people and organizations made our work in Kenya possible this first year. At this point I would like to thank Acrolinx for donating the computers we use in the center, Microsoft for the Windows and Office licenses, Kilgray for the memoQ licenses, Kimotho Waweru for setting up our computers, Dr. Iribe Mwangi of the University of Nairobi for his support and guidance, David Musungu and other external editors for their work, and all the bright minds who enhanced the quality of our training program by giving a guest lecture (representing Doctors without Borders, Google Africa, Praekelt Foundation, Microsoft, SIL, BTL, University of Nairobi and more).

Individuals and companies are actively supporting our work. Others donate money. It was heart-warming to learn about the various translation and localization companies who decided to donate $1,000 in our Fund-A-Translator program. A special thanks to Language Connect, which generously donated $5,000. Then there was the Polish language service provider TextPartner, which organized a 400-kilometer sponsored bike ride from Krakow to Budapest, raising $2,000! They will do another in May/June, covering five countries in their ride!  Another big thank you to Henry Dotterer, founder of ProZ.com, which powers our worldwide network of translators.  On top of all else they do, ProZ.com matched our Fund-a-Translator program in November as part of the #GivingTuesday campaign in the U.S.  Thanks to them and to so many others who have given to our training center.

TwB is a large organization, but it only has one paid staff member, Rebecca Petras. All other members of the management team are volunteers, combining TWB work with their day jobs. And again many others also combine their normal work with some level of volunteer work for TWB. We feel we have a great cause, and this is the time of the year to express our gratitude. On behalf of the Nairobi center manager, the translators and the editors at TWB Kenya, I would very much like to thank everybody for their input, efforts, donations and contributions during 2012. I sincerely hope that you will support us in 2013 as well! If you have read all this and feel you want to be part of it, please visit the TWB website, think about children who die because health information was not in a language they could understand, click the Donate button, and be generous. Thank you, and have a great 2013!

Silicon Valley lies some 9,000 miles away from West Africa, and a world away in terms of high-tech development. Yet organizations working in both regions require some similar skills. When Translators without Borders (TWB) needed help with healthcare initiatives aimed at countries such as Ethiopia, it turned to Content Rules, a Los Gatos-based professional services company that specializes in global content. Its brief was to simplify source material pre-translation to ensure that the end product would be easily understood by people of any background – absolutely crucial when lives are at stake.

A global approach

CEO Val Swisher explains that Content Rules has worked with content of all types, from words and pictures to multimedia. The company focuses on content strategy, development, and global readiness, to ensure source content is as easy as possible to translate. “Our work might be technical or related to marketing or training and we draw on a team of some 2,000 freelance professionals, including writers, editors, graphic artists and website coders. Our location means we have particular experience in the technology sector which also encompasses life science companies.” This expertise combined with the company’s global perspective means Content Rules is ideally placed to work with Translators without Borders.

“It was just before Christmas a year ago,” recalls Swisher, “that Translators without Borders approached us with a request to help with their Simple Wikipedia Project, a two-year project to translate into simple English a total of 80 medical articles posted on Wikipedia.”

The aim, Swisher says, was to facilitate translation into languages around the world. “I circulated a request for volunteers among our freelancers and the response was absolutely overwhelming. Since then, our volunteers have also helped develop a training course for a new team of translators in Nairobi on how to write using simplified English, produced health brochures and pamphlets for Kenya and worked on a major project called Health, Education and Training for Africa. This content was originally written for Ethiopia and we were tasked with making it more generically African so that it can be used as widely as possible. It’s already earmarked for use in Uganda.”

Life-changing work

Content Rules volunteers are currently working on multiple Translators without Borders projects. “They are all absolutely passionate about this work, as am I,” says Swisher. “I’ve been in this business for almost 19 years, during which time I’ve had the opportunity to work with some incredibly brilliant technical minds and some of the very best companies – but working with TWB is so direct and so personal and so life-changing. To be able to help and save lives in this way is a true honor and a blessing. Although it sounds corny, that is what I feel about this work, and it has become one of the main reasons I get up in the morning and come to work. If I were independently wealthy and didn’t need to earn any money, I’d donate 100 percent of my time to this effort, and every one of the editors who works on these projects feels the same.”

The mission of Make-a-Wish International is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. The organization was born in February of 1993 to serve the five countries granting wishes outside the U.S., and now helps to serve children outside the United States in 48 countries on five continents through its 37 affiliates. Translators without Borders assists Make-a-Wish in providing high-quality translations to share stories, train volunteers and pitch supporters in their native languages.

Make-a-Wish International chose Translators without Borders as its 2010-2011 Volunteer of the Year.

Sylvia Hopkins, Vice President of Marketing at Make-A-Wish International, gave an example of how the work of Translators without Borders volunteers make a difference to children suffering from life-threatening medical conditions: “An example of some translated materials is one of our tools which we use to work with the wish children to find out their ‘one true wish’; that tool is “Wish Cards”, which is a card game the wish granters use to play with the children. The wording on the cards have been translated into six languages. Another tool for extracting wishes is our ‘Wish Book’, which has also been translated into several languages.”

Hopkins added, “Our mission has no boundaries, and we know that a smile is a smile is a smile – in any language – and laughter has no accent, yet without translations, it would be very difficult to operate in other countries.”

The most common language translation provided to Make-A-Wish International is Spanish.

Translators without Borders’ volunteer efforts have proven highly valuable to Make-A-Wish International. Hopkins noted: “From collateral materials, to the tools mentioned above, to many forms of communications to our constituents: Make-A-Wish International has benefited from TWB’s professionalism and excellent work for various projects throughout the year! Thank you!!”