Meet Translators without Borders trainees in Nairobi, Kenya.
When the trainees have finished this module, they will begin translating a healthcare application into Swahili that can then be accessed via cell phones.
Author: Translators without Borders
Translating For Humanity
In response to the demand for pro bono translation services worldwide…
© BY FRANÇOISE HERRMANN, PhD
Founded 18 years ago in Paris by Lori Thicke (CEO of Lexcelera) and Ros Smith-Thomas (co-owner of Lexcelera), Traducteurs sans frontières was established as a charitable organization in France. The name Traducteurs sans frontières was selected because the organization’s first client was Médicins sans frontières/Doctors without Borders, the medical disaster-relief NGO (non-governmental organization) that later won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2010, Lori Thicke founded Translators without Borders, a sister organization in the United States with non-profit 501©(3) status. Until fairly recently, Traducteurs sans frontières brokered pro bono translation services of approximately 1 million words per year to NGOs, representing about $250,000 of donated services per year. In 2011, however, with the foundation of Translators without Borders in the US, this number doubled, with 1 million words already translated as early as June; a 10-fold projected increase within the next few years was envisioned. (For the most up-to-date figures, see the counter displaying the number of translated words at theTWB Translation Center.)
For all languages
Translators without Borders is equipped to provide pro bono translation services in any language combination. For the first half of 2011, the highest demands were: French to English (34.6%), English to French (16.7%), English to Spanish (9.84%), English to Arabic (3.87%) and English to Russian (2.07%), with the balance (32.92%) consisting of another 40 language combinations, including English to Yoruba (0.33%), English to German (0.90%), English to Turkish (1.13%), English to Persian (1.13%)*.
Translators without Borders vets any NGO requesting its services. This means that all NGOs with which it works are verified in terms of their status as charitable and non-profit organizations. It also means that translators may rest assured that their pro bono services are received for legitimate non-profit causes. The requesting organizations are also vetted to ensure that they do not advocate extreme religious or political views. There are currently 53 NGOs registered with Translators without Borders, and the organization has the capacity to take on 100 more. (Browse the list of NGOs and their descriptions at the TWB Translation Center).
In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, Translators without Borders partnered with ProZ.com, an online community of professional translators and adopted their networking tools. Inundated with requests for translations in Haiti, where an international rescue effort was underway, Translators without Borders initially turned toProZ.com for more volunteer translators, and then to screen translators, because of the spectacular number of responses (800!) from the ProZ.com community of translators. Moving forward, this partnership, born in a crisis of catastrophic proportions, led to the development of the TWB Translation Center, an automated service and delivery platform, donated 100% by ProZ.com. It is this invisible technology quietly empowering Translators without Borders that explains the quantum leap in the number of pro bono translated words in response to an increased capacity to process NGO requests.
As Lori Thicke puts it:
“The idea is that with a huge pool of talented volunteers on one side, and an enormous demand from non-profits on the other, the only bottleneck is getting those two groups together. Our guiding principle has been that we don’t need to be in the middle of this process. All we need to do is set certain standards for both translators and charities then put the technology in place to help them work together.” (Lori’s blog, posted May 30, 2011)
At the end of the day
To become listed in the Translators without Borders database of translators, linguists are required to submit an application at the Translators without Borders website (click on Translators>How to volunteer). Only professional translators are finally admitted. Translators are then evaluated via the automated ProZ.com testing platform using a series of Translators without Borders tests that the translator selects in his or her area of specialization and language combinations. A committee of three Translators without Borders translators then evaluates the tests. Once accepted, the translator’s name is registered in the Translators without Borders database of translators, and the translator is supplied with a login ID and password to gain access to the NGO requests via the TWB Translation Center. Once a translation request is fulfilled, it is uploaded to the TWB Translation Center for delivery to the NGO and pick-up. The turnaround time for projects is slightly longer, because this is pro bono work and translators are not expected to spend their entire week on a project.
There are currently 640 approved translators in the Translators without Borders database, and many more have recently submitted test translations. (See the list with photos, and query the database by language combinations and fields of specialization at the TWB Translation Center.) During the month of June 2011 alone, 319 translators were active, translating a total of 186,926 words. Among the 319 active translators, the top 10 (most active) volunteer translators averaged 6186 words of donated translation services, with jobs ranging on average approximately 1000 to 1600 words. As Gail Desautels, Translators without Borders super-superstar with 25 jobs and 16771 words to her credit during the month of June 2011, puts it:
“…translating for TWB is the redemption in my day. Not only do I get to travel to countries around the world, but I can also say at the end of the day that I have done something very worthwhile.” (Gail Desautels, from a personal email communication, August 20, 2011)
Even if pro bono work hardly pays the rent, here is how the process completes for Corinne Durand, another Translators without Borders top contributor with 4 jobs and 6795 words to her credit for the month of June 2011:
“I had often wondered how to go about bringing my personal contribution to the relentless work of NGOs. TSB/TWB has provided me with a way to do it that fits perfectly both with my personal and professional life. Indeed, I feel very privileged to be allowed to make a little difference by doing something I love.” (Corinne Durand, from a personal email communication, August 21, 2011)
In many fields
The types of NGO translation requests span such domains as legal, medical, healthcare, epidemiology, educational, and agricultural, including the following kinds of requests: translation of eyewitness or awareness reports in conflict areas; documentation for a campaign against child labor; field reports on urban violence; NGO web pages (see, for example,Goodplanet.org); instructions manual for dealing with child trauma victims; manuals for childcare of orphans developed in collaboration with local professionals; requests for micro-funding, directions for coordinating international disaster-relief teams; medical training manuals; medical information for childbirth, childcare, and first aid instructions. Projects range from one page to several hundred, with the larger projects divided among several volunteer translators so that no one is asked to translate more than 10 pages.
Translators without Borders clients i nclude Doctors without Borders, Action Against Hunger, Zafèn, Trickle up, Oxfam, QuakeSOS, Make-a-Wish, AIDES, Handicap International, Partners in Health, Fair Start Training, Medical Aid Films, and many more. During the month of June 2011, the most active organization was Zafèn (representing 28.57% of the TWB Translation Center activity), an organization that organizes micro-financing opportunities in Haiti.
The Translators without Borders motto is “Every dollar we save for an NGO is another dollar that can be spent caring for people in the field.” At a rate of 1 million words (valued at $250,000) each year for 17 years, and the capacity for a projected 10 million words per year, with the empowerment of ProZ.com technology, this is indeed “changing the world, one word at a time” and is truly an impressive feat on more counts than one.
To get involved
If you want to get involved… this is the place to start. Despite moving mountains, Translators without Borders barely covers 1% of the translation needs of NGOs. As Lori Thicke has pointed out, it is not only diseases that kill. The absence of information, or misinformation, is also a major killer—for example, when mothers believe they must withhold fluids in case of diarrhea, when boiling milk becomes a cure for malaria, or when smoking is believed to be a cure for migraines and protection from stroke. The organization’s mission is to increase access to information through translation. As Lori puts it:
“The elephant in the access to information room is translation.” (Lori’sblog, posted May 16, 2011)
Stay tuned—because Translators without Borders has taken yet another step forward, securing funding to open, as early as February 2012, a Translation Training Center in Nairobi, in the Horn of Africa, that is designed to train healthcare translators. This center is envisioned as a pilot for future Translators without Borders training centers across the world “…wherever there is a devastating mix of extreme poverty, poor health and a non-existing translation infrastructure,” according to Simon Andriesen, Translators without Borders Board Member. This center is envisioned to fulfill some of the tremendous needs for translation in local languages: in Swahili, spoken by 5 to 10 million people as a first language and 100 million people as a second language, and in other local languages such as Maasai, Kikamba and Luo.
Similarly, stay tuned for more exponential ProZ.com community-building activity, linking professional service providers and the demand for services, since the pro bono TWB Translation Center has proved an extremely rigorous field test of ProZ.com technology and its amazing and beautiful capacity for vibrant empowerment.
Now, that’s worshipping Ganesh! **
*All statistics are courtesy of Enrique Cavalitto atProZ.com.
** Hindu deity—Remover of obstacles—represented as an elephant.
AT A GLANCE – GUIDELINES FOR GETTING INVOLVED IN PRO-BONO TRANSLATION FOR HUMANITARIAN CAUSES
1. Translators without Borders (requires enrollment and registration to evaluate your credentials and capacities). This is the largest network of humanitarian translation opportunities and services. The non-profit status of the NGOs (non-government organizations) requesting translations, is verified, as well as their causes.
2. Work directly with an NGO or non-profit organization. In this case, verify the status of the requesting organization yourself with a non-profit watch organization such as Charity Navigator.
3. Regular translation agencies sometimes provide humanitarian translation services. In this case transparency is paramount and the best practice. Normally, if an agency accepts a pro bono translation project, it is the agency’s contribution and gift.
© Françoise Herrmann 2011
AT A GLANCE – HUMANITARIAN CAUSES IN 2011
Famine
Drought-stricken Horn of Africa—12.4 million people affected. (UN WFP)
Famine officially declared in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda with catastrophic proportions in Mogadishu.
Water & sanitation
Even without drought 300 to 500 million people in Africa do not have access to sanitation and safe drinking water. (UN WFP)
Japan: March 2011 Earthquake and tsunami resulting in a nuclear crisis—500,000 people homeless, 20,000 perished.
Haiti: Cholera epidemic following the 2010 earthquake that claimed 250,000 lives and displaced more than 1 million people. (PIH)
HIV/AIDS
40 million people estimated living with HIV worldwide, with 95% in developing countries, two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa. (PIH)
Tuberculosis
Curable lung disease killing 2 million people each year. (PIH)
Childbirth & labor
1000 women die from childbirth or the complications of labor each day: 300 in Asia and 570 in Sub-Saharan Africa. (WHO- UNICEF)
Childhood
22,000 children estimated to die each day from preventable diseases. (UNICEF)
© Françoise Herrmann 2011
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks for the information they have so kindly supplied for this article in a series of phone conversations: Lori Thicke (CEO Lexcelera), co-founder of TSF and TWB, located in France & Simon Andriesen (CEO of Medilingua) located in Holland, TWB Board Member in charge of Operations, and Enrique Cavalitto, ProZ.com Manager, located in Argentina, in charge of the ProZ.com ”white label” technology for the TWB Translation Center.
WEBSITES:
Content Rules CEO Val Swisher Joins TWB Board of Directors
Swisher’s Appointment Highlights the Importance of Developing Global-Ready Content
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) June 20, 2012 – Content Rules, Inc. today announced that CEO Val Swisher has accepted an invitation to join Translators without Borders’ Board of Directors. As a general board member, Swisher will act as an advisor on future Translators without Borders projects.
Prior to her appointment, Swisher led several collaborative efforts between Content Rules and Translators without Borders, including developing a training course on “How to Write Using Simplified English” for a new team of translators in Nairobi.
Currently, Val and her team at Content Rules are working with Translators without Borders on the “Simple Wikipedia Project.” Throughout this 2+ year endeavor, a total of 80 medical articles posted on Wikipedia will be translated into simple English, which will enable the pages to be translated into many languages around the world.
“Val has already made a tremendous difference in our work in Africa so we are thrilled to welcome her to our board of directors,” says Lori Thicke, Co-Founder of Translators Without Borders. “With her passion and expertise in developing content that can be understood by people of all backgrounds, we look forward to having Val strengthen our impact.”
“As CEO of Content Rules, I have worked with many top companies such as PayPal to make “global readiness” content a priority. However, a personal goal of mine is to extend this concept to people all over the world who need simplified content the most,“ says Swisher. “Now with my involvement with Translators Without Borders, I am certain that creating better content to save lives will undoubtedly become a reality.”
Val Swisher earned her B.A. in Social Psychology and Music from Tufts University. She founded Content Rules in 1994 and under her leadership the company has grown to serve 200+ customers and encompass a network of 2,000+ technically-astute content developers. Val is a frequent speaker on how to create, standardize, and get your content ready for the demands of the global marketplace. Before starting Content Rules, Swisher held management positions at 3Com and SynOptics.
Val lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Greg, her son Max who blogs at Good Morning Geek, and frequently travels to Denver to visit her son Matthew.
About Content Rules
Formerly Oak Hill Corporation, Content Rules reduces the cost of globalizing your content, so you can expand your brands’ footprint into more markets. Implemented in the cloud, ContentRules™ IQ targets companies with an in-house team, reducing the cost of localizing content by up to 40% while enforcing control over content quality and brand standards. For those customers who don’t have an in-house team, Content Rules provides the people and expertise needed in four areas: technical documentation, training development, marketing collateral, and global readiness.
Translators without Borders opens Health Translators’ Training Center in Kenya
Translators Without Borders, a humanitarian organization providing free translations, opens a training school in Nairobi, Kenya. Simon Andriesen, TWB Board Member, talks about the opening and the organization’s mission.
The 2nd of April was a special day for Translators without Borders. On that day, after much preparation, Translators without Borders (TWB) opened its pilot Health Translators’ Training Center in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. During three to four-day sessions over four weeks, six groups of participants were introduced to translation, and more specifically to translation of health information. In all, 100 participants took part in the April sessions. Based on the experiences, the program is being revised and modified before returning to Kenya in August.
The participants had widely varying backgrounds, from health librarians to government employees working in the field on Health Promotion, from youth workers to dispensary staff and community health workers, and from peer educators to hospital interpreters. What they had in common was an affinity with public health promotion and a strong interest in language.
Translators without Borders is known for facilitating the work that professional translators volunteer to do for humanitarian organizations, such as Doctors without Borders, using a web-based platform generously developed, donated, and managed by ProZ. In 2011, TWB helped translate over three million words, with a ‘street value’ of around $600,000. This in itself is already a sizable donation but, more importantly, translation can be of life-saving importance to millions of people with poor health, no doctors around, and health information all in the wrong language. These populations typically live in poor areas, and studying a language is not something many people can afford to do. Even so, many people in Africa speak three to five different languages. In Kenya, for example, people with at least some education often speak English and Swahili, languages taught at school, as well as one, or a few, of the 42 local languages spoken at home. Swahili is spoken by around 75 million people, across 9 countries in East Africa, mostly as a lingua franca. This language area covers a territory with at least 200 different local languages.
Most of the health information available in Kenya is available in English only even though half of the population does not speak English. Translation in Swahili would already be a big step forward, but it would be much better to translate vital health information into the local languages.
There are many tragic examples of what may happen if people do not have access to health information in a language they understand. But one story I always keep in the back of my mind is about a one-year-old girl who died after a few days of diarrhea. The mother commented she had stopped feeding the girl water ‘because it immediately came out at the other end and that way it never stops.’ As many people know, in the treatment of diarrhea it is crucial to feed the patient lots of water, to prevent dehydration, which if untreated will lead to shock and, ultimately, death. The person telling us this dreadful story mentioned that the parents had in fact clean water, sugar and salt in their house, and these are the only things you need to treat diarrhea. The parents simply did not know. Yet it takes only one quarter of an A4 sheet of paper to print the instructions around diarrhea, and maybe 20 minutes of work for a translator.
At TWB we decided that we no longer accept that people would suffer, or die, because of a language obstacle. We understood that the platform would not be enough to reach some populations because there were simply not enough translators working into certain languages. We prepared plans to train health information translators. As a member of TWB’s Board of Directors, I volunteered to make the training package available that my company had developed to train medical translators. This package is written for experienced, professional translators, who need to be introduced to medical translation. When looking at the materials, I quickly realized that the assumed level of background and education was simply not realistic, and I then decided to start from scratch and regenerate all materials. A new feature was a half day introductory module on what translation is, and more specifically what medical translation, or rather: healthcare translation is all about. This module includes translation methods, tips and tricks, an introduction to TM tools, and on how to build and maintain a glossary – all very basic information. I also integrated information on the difference between translation and interpretation, and produced an introduction to subtitling, and instructions about word count and spell checking, as well as on how to Skype and how to use search engines.
The medical component of the training package consists of around 20 introductions to Africa-relevant health problems. These are mostly disorders, such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and cholera, but also social health issues, such as malnutrition, unsafe abortion, and female genital mutilation (FGM). Each of these medical modules takes 30-45 minutes to teach and most of these are followed by an exercise: participants each translate a few sentences from a related health information sheet and the results are projected on the screen and then discussed by the whole group. This is a very powerful education method and participants really seem to learn a lot from these discussions. During the training, it was remarkable to watch people who had never translated before behave like typical translators in having heated debates about the meaning of a specific word, or the proper location of a comma.
For one group of trainees we travelled half a day to the part of Kenya where the Masaai live. For a group of 12 school teachers, a social worker, dispensary staff and a community health worker, we focused on the translation of materials about specific disorders, for example trachoma, an infectious eye disease that will lead to blindness if not treated. We used an empty school class room. The dedication and motivation of the Masaai participants was overwhelming. One of the projects we worked on was the translation of subtitles into Maa of a health video on cholera prevention. This is probably the first ever video with Maa subtitles!
We also attracted quite a bit of press interest: The Voice of America followed us one day and did a radio and television piece on the training; the Guardian carried an interesting article about us; and, we took the BBC World Service along to the Masaai training.
The Translators without Borders Healthcare Translation Training Center is partly funded by TWB, partly by earmarked donations, and partly by involved TWB Board Members. Whenever I claim ‘that we no longer accept that people would suffer, or die, because of a language obstacle,’ I would like to think that I speak on behalf of the whole localization sector. Companies that want to support our work can do so. They can become TWB sponsors or they can adopt part of our efforts in Kenya. To train a translator for three weeks costs around $400; a PC and a decent set of dictionaries costs around $300. Throw in an extra $300 and the translator has one year of unlimited internet access.
Small amounts. Huge effects. Think about the baby that died not of diarrhea but of lack of information. Keep her in mind. And then just visit www.translatorswithoutborders.com and hit the Donate button.
By Simon Andriesen, Board President of TWB Kenya and CEO of MediLingua
Subtitles for Mothers in India from Translators without Borders
Translators without Borders volunteer Leandro Reis is leading a project to subtitle health films into over a dozen Indian languages including Telugu, Gujarati and Kannada. These films, created by the Mother and Child Health and Education Trust, will encourage hospitals and community health workers to teach new mothers about breastfeeding their babies.
His subtitling work is being carried out on the dotSUB.com platform.
Why is this so important? Because each day 11,000 babies die in the developing world from preventable causes. Of those who die, 22 percent could survive if their mothers had better knowledge about breastfeeding.
Thanks to the volunteers you see here, and many others, Translators without Borders is working to ensure that in the future, mothers in India will know how to keep their babies healthy. Read more here.
Helping Haitians Rebuild
Raising funds to finance deserving projects is something every non-profit must master, and the challenge is exponential when your donors are global. That was the issue Zafènencountered when it launched in 2010. But it wasn’t a conundrum this online Haitian micro-credit program faced for long. Translators without Borders volunteered to translate project descriptions from English into French and Spanish, vastly expanding the number of people who might be inspired to support them.
“TWB translators have worked on more than 50 documents that we were able to share with generous people around the world seeking to empower Haitians,” said Griselda Garibay,Vincentian Family administrator for Zafèn. “And they did it all for free, which is a price non-profits can afford!”
Garibay said Translators without Borders’ work was especially valuable because the top three languages spoken by Zafèn’s Facebook users are English, French and Spanish. Furthermore, the Haitian Diaspora is active in funding projects, and many Haitians speak French. In sum, TWB has helped Zafèn successfully promote 26 individual projects in three languages that raised more than $500,000 in just seven months.
A recent project translated by Translators without Borders raised money to enroll Haitian families living in extreme poverty in a proven program that enables them to change the course of their lives. Selected families receive construction materials to build a house with a sturdy roof and a floor. They also build a separate latrine, gain access to free healthcare, a water filter and receive weekly visits from a case manager, who reinforces what they have learned to ensure progress along the path to prosperity. Translators without Borders’ translations helped fund a better life for about 1,000 Haitian parents and children as they work toward a fresh start in the New Year.
Translators without Borders Translator Heros: Marcia Miner
French to English American translator, Marcia Miner is one of the skilled translators who volunteer their time for Translators without Borders. In 2011, Marcia completed 41 projects, totaling 64,228 words donated to NGOs, making her the lead translator with Translator without Borders for the year.
Q: Tell us a bit about yourself and your career path.
A: I’m from Glen Ridge, New Jersey, am fluent in French, and began my translation career as a bilingual secretary at Peugeot’s American headquarters when the French company was exporting cars to the States. My specialty fields are medical, children’s education, the environment, arts and literature.
Q: Why do you work with Translators without Borders?
A: After the Haitian earthquake, I responded to TWB’s appeal for translators and was accepted. If anything I do can help in some small way to ease the burden on doctors, nurses, teachers, and administrators who are fighting to improve the lives of children and adults around the world suffering under unacceptable conditions, as well as preserve the environment, then I’m glad to do it.
Q: Any particular project / experience with Translators without Borders that you’ll never forget?
A: I especially enjoyed translating a pediatrics/nutrition exam for Doctors without Borders to help train nurses in Kenya.
Q: As a “translator without borders” with such a high count of translated words, what challenges did you encounter (or still do)?
A: I work without translation memory software, and could be much more productive with it.
Q: What do you think of the Translators without Borders Translation Center?
A: The Translation Center runs smoothly and the deadlines are manageable. It’s easy and reliable for me to send and receive documents. The administrators are very cordial and polite.
Q: How is the contact with client NGOs via the Translation Center so far?
A: Contact with client NGOs via the center has been fine.
Q: When you are not translating for TWB, what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
A: Raising our puppy and collecting dolls and antiques!
One of our Heroic Volunteers: Dominic Spurling
Our Volunteer Heroes are the engine that makes Translators without Borders run. We are a completely volunteer-run organization with a vast number of amazing people working together to make a difference. For this first issue of our newsletter, we have interviewed one of our Volunteer Heroes: Dominic Spurling, the Webmaster at TWB, a self-taught high-tech computer guy, who is in charge of the “mechanics and plumbing” of our site.
Q: If you were to write a brief wiki article about yourself, what facts and personal characteristics would you include?
A: I grew up in a small town outside London, in Berkhamsted, on quiet streets. I used to play tennis, ride my bike, play in the garden, and dig ponds. I guess that’s when I became interested in nature. During school years, I was into science, biology and chemistry and then, when technology and computers became available, I started paying more attention to technology, computers, and programming. My parents said I had to study something “serious” at college, so I decided to go for chemistry. Currently, and for a few years now, my work is mainly about making organizations more efficient and better communicated. I love collaborating with smart people on my team, and coming up with a lot of innovative ideas.
Q: What is your role at Translators without Borders?
A: I’m the Webmaster for the Translators without Borders’ website. I take care of the “mechanics and the plumbing”, the part you don’t get to see.
Q: What has motivated you to help Translators without Borders?
A: My mother (a TWB board member from Rubric.com) told me Translators without Borders was in need of a Webmaster, and I found out that I could use my skills to help.
Q: What is a day in your life like?
A: My day starts at 7.30 a.m., I have breakfast, and I cycle to work (I exercise at the same time, which is great), get to the office, solve the issues first, and then do the fun part – discussing with colleagues new features for the website. I finish work around 6 in the evening, wait for my wife to come home (who takes care of animals at a wildlife organization) and watch some TV. In our spare time, we go to the park near our home, and we also enjoy snowboarding and sailing.
Q: How do you squeeze in time for your volunteer tasks?
A: I always have my “tools” at hand, so maybe I squeeze in half an hour or a whole hour every weekday – possibly in my lunchtime. If the tasks take longer, I do them during weekends.
Q: What do you consider are the challenges ahead for your role and for Translators without Borders?
A: We have so many ideas and suggestions coming in to include in the website; it’s complex to coordinate them, assign priorities, use new technologies, but the learning process to actually get the system behind those ideas – to make them a reality – is great fun.
Q: What would you say to someone who is thinking about joining a cause like Translators without Borders?
A: That it’s great – you can do it from your home and contribute to the world. The world is very connected but needs to be more connected, and that’s why it’s important to join a global cause like Translators without Borders.
Q: To what extent do your professional and personal goals come together with your volunteer work?
A: The skills I use for TWB and my work are the same, so that’s a great achievement.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about teamwork and personal relationships with other members of Translators without Borders?
A: We coordinate everything through e-mails and Skype. Rebecca has been very good at coordinating people and ideas, and Silvina is the designer. Rebecca and Silvina usually discuss a new section or a new feature of the website, along with other members of Translators without Borders, and then I take a look at those ideas, give my opinion and we move on to work.
Q: What do you feel is your greatest achievement within TWB and beyond TWB so far?
A: Well, the website itself.
Dying for Lack of Knowledge
Research clearly shows that people prefer to buy products and services in their own languages (1). This is the reason that so many businesses have undertaken translation and localization projects to transform their websites and documents from English into the native language(s) of their target markets. This seems like a pretty basic concept, but unfortunately, one that has not been adopted by many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attempting to provide information that has the potential to save millions of lives.
For many years, numerous NGOs in Africa have been producing materials largely in English or French, based on the assumption that everyone now speaks the languages once imposed by colonial administrations. The result of this logic is that many documents, manuals, reports, websites, posters and pamphlets are often in a language that many people can’t understand. This mistaken belief – that everyone in Africa speaks English or French (and to a lesser extent Portuguese) – has significantly reduced the effectiveness of numerous projects, including disaster relief, education, nutrition and gender equality programmes. There are many people across Africa who speak neither English nor French, and if they do, it is often their third or fourth language. The people who do speak English or French fluently often comprise the elite minority who are highly educated and live in urban areas. But the majority of Africans live in more rural areas where local languages and dialects are often spoken.
Lori Thicke, co-founder of Translators without Borders (TWB), provides several examples of the need for African NGOs to have materials translated into local languages. For example, in Thange, Kenya, most villagers speak Swahili and barely understand English. But the large poster encouraging healthy practices to reduce the spread of HIV is in English, along with the village’s sole health manual. Another eye-opening example took place when Thicke traveled to Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya (and the second largest slum in all of Africa) with a delegation from Translators without Borders.3 Approximately one million of the world’s poorest people live in Kibera and it was here that the need for translation into local languages is particularly urgent.
On their visit, TWB had the opportunity to speak with 15 young girls working in the commercial sex industry. The girls also hold the honored position of being ‘peer educators’ in their community. Their responsibilities include educating other women living in the slum on important health issues, including family planning, nutrition and the prevention of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). These young women are in the unique position of being able to reach other people in their community much more effectively than any ‘outsider.’ But there’s just one major problem. Language barriers and the resulting lack of information are killing people and destroying lives. This is especially evident in light of the number of people with HIV, the number of girls dying from unsafe abortions, the high rate of female cutting and the number of children orphaned by AIDS.
Peer educators are therefore justifiably frustrated with the lack of written health materials in the languages of the women in their community. One said that most of the women they work with speak and understand very little English, but that English is actually the language of over 90% of the written materials they have access to, resulting in a huge lack of understanding of the health practices that could save lives. Brochures in English often get tossed to the ground because recipients can’t understand the information they provide. As a result, these young women have asked Translators without Borders to train their entire group to be able to translate the brochures into local languages so they will be better able to communicate with the people they are trying to educate. They fully understand that access to materials in local languages can prevent diseases and STIs.
Thicke summarises the requirement to provide access to health information in local African languages in an interview with The Huffington Post’s Nataly Kelly: ‘in poorer regions, the information that people need, crucially, like how to protect themselves against AIDS, malaria, cholera and so on, is locked up in languages they don’t even speak. Ironically, the people who need that information the most – information about health, science, technology and so on – have zero access to it because of the language barrier.’6Thicke, too, endorses the direct relationship between access to knowledge and access to health: ‘knowledge is incredibly powerful. Knowledge ensures better health and longer lives, it reduces maternal mortality, it empowers women, it saves children from dying unnecessarily, it improves economic opportunities, it lifts people out of poverty, it encourages protection of the environment…’4 A closer look at Thicke’s statement reveals that many of the Millennium Development Goals hinge on the relationship between knowledge and health. Thicke stresses that without translation, worldwide access to knowledge, including the knowledge that can save lives, is impossible. And without global access to knowledge, the lofty goals of universal access to education and gender equality, as well as reducing poverty, maternal mortality and childhood deaths from preventable diseases, are also impossible.5
Since there are so few translators of African languages, TWB has focused on capacity building through mentoring local translators to be able to better provide translations in local languages. One of these projects is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country that has been decimated by years of war, resource exploitation, systemic sexual violence and rampant disease. There are so many aid organizations working in the DRC and a project like this has the potential to provide the NGOs with the translators they need to communicate vital information concerning health, education, nutrition, sexual assault, etc.
The Rehydration Project, an organization that provides easy-to-understand and practical advice on preventing and treating diarrhoeal diseases, clearly illustrates the value of information in local languages right on their website: ‘Information available in the local language is much more effective than in a foreign language. This is true for engineering and construction projects (such as digging water wells), and agricultural projects (such as how to irrigate the land). But it is particularly important in healthcare. In many areas in the world people do not only die from diseases, but also from the fact that they do not have basic information about how to stay healthy and what to do to prevent disease.’8
However, disease prevention is not the only urgent need. When I was in Ghana working for a women’s rights NGO, I learned first-hand the need for people to have materials in their local languages that focused on domestic violence. Even though the official language of Ghana is English, there are dozens of languages and dialects spoken throughout the country. The number of languages spoken, particularly in the northern, rural parts of the country, posed specific problems to my organisation. Even though we had access to local interpreters, when we spoke with women who were survivors of domestic violence during interviews or training sessions, it was clear that many of the women had questions that could have been answered through materials such as brochures, posters or pamphlets in their native language. These materials would also have helped spread messages of equality that could have contributed to curbing domestic violence in their homes and communities. In this way, women who have access to NGOs could share vital information with those who do not. The importance of NGOs having materials translated into local languages so they can better communicate with the people they are trying to help cannot be stressed enough. Without information and materials in local languages, NGOs will be unable to facilitate necessary changes in healthcare, education, disaster relief, environmental protection and gender equality.
By Cheryl Rettig, a freelance writer with wintranslation and who has completed international human rights internships in Haiti, Ghana, India, Israel and Palestine and Washington, DC. Cheryl has also written extensively on commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, torture, sexual violence in conflict zones and gender equality. To see more of Cheryl’s work, please check out “Women Search for Justice” at http://womensearchforjustice.blogspot.com.
Training healthcare translators in Kenya
Translators without Borders is just a step away from starting up a training program for healthcare translators in Kenya. And your help is needed! Please keep reading and you will find some suggestions about how you can contribute to this very important project.
Lack of African Healthcare Translators
Translators without Borders’ core role is to facilitate the work professional translators donate to humanitarian organizations. And for most languages, this works very well. In 2011, we provided around 2.5 million words to more than 70 NGOs. However, for a number of target languages we have found there are not any, or at least very few, translators available. One of these languages is Swahili, spoken (mostly as a lingua franca) by around 100 million people across nine countries in East Africa. This language area ‘covers’ hundreds of smaller languages (there are 42 languages in Kenya alone!). To remedy this problem, especially for healthcare information, we designed a healthcare translators’ training program that we will roll out in Kenya.
Why is translation in African languages important? In our visits to Africa we have discovered that people who don’t speak a European language – 70-80 percent of the population – cannot understand critical knowledge that they need to keep themselves and their families healthy. According to the former head of UNICEF, most of the children who die in Africa die not of diseases, but because of lack of knowledge. We aim to change that by building local capacity to translate critical health information so it can be understood by the people who need this information the most.
Translators without Borders warmly welcomed!
During a recent fact-finding trip we discussed our plans with the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. They warmly welcomed the initiative and immediately offered us a 150 square meter training location, walking distance from the Kenyatta National Hospital, the largest hospital in East Africa. We also spoke with many local organizations, doctors, and community healthcare workers and learned the following:
- There is indeed a shortage of healthcare translators.
- English documents, brochures and flyers are useless for many people as they don’t speak English.
- Translated materials will definitely save time for overburdened doctors, nurses, and community healthcare workers informing people about their health (or condition), and trying to prevent disease.
We also found out that translation into Swahili alone is not enough; translation training is needed for at least ten of the other Kenyan languages.
The training program
The training program is based on the MediLingua course ‘Medical-Pharmaceutical Translation’, but rewritten for people who do not need to be trained in complex matters such as how to translate extremely technical surgeons’ instructions, and also for people who are mostly new to translation. Starting this spring we will train a variety of people to translate simple but crucial healthcare information on Africa-relevant topics, including infectious diseases, STDs, reproductive health, malaria, family planning, unsafe abortions, and female genital mutilation. The introductory training will include basic modules such as:
- What is translation?
- How to build glossaries
- How to find background information
- How to deal with new terms and write clearly
- Introduction to interpretation
- How to translate and subtitle videos
How can you help?
If you live in Kenya and you feel you can assist us in training people in one of the 42 local languages, please let us know.
If you feel you have an excellent command of Swahili and/or other Kenyan languages, we would appreciate your skills in reviewing the trainees’ work and/or mentoring one or more of the trainees.
Of course, if you can’t do any of this but you want to support us, we desperately need funding. TWB is a volunteer organization, but that does not mean we don’t have expenses running the center. It is not much: we really only need $5,000 (or €4,000) a month to finance the center. Please help us set up this very important center.
Visit the Translators without Borders website to find instructions about how you can donate!