Category: Uncategorized

Translators Without Borders is thrilled to have a responsive network of donors supporting our mission to help ensure local language availability of critical health, safety and educational information in developing countries. One of our most creative fundraisers is run by language services provider TextPartner sp.j, based in Poland. TextPartner is the driving force behind OnOurBikes, which raises funds for TWB annually, via long-distance sponsored bike rides. Before the latest ride, which has just finished (raising almost $10,000!), TextPartner’s co-founder and Operations Manager, Marek Gawrysiak, shared the OnOurBikes story!

Q: Marek, first can you tell us a bit about your own story and how you started TextPartner?

Sure! I started as freelance translator, typically on my computer at 3am in the morning to meet 8am deadlines. There was always one person I could count on to be available at 3am for linguistic, DTP and programming help, at that was my future co-founder, Lucjan Szreter. He was a chief editor at a newspaper, also living in Poland about 400km away, back in the late 90s. We decided to set up a company together, beginning in a little apartment one floor down from Lucjan’s flat. As more and more work came in, we hired more people full-time and eventually took over the entire floor for office space. Today we have 18 people and are still growing. We started with English to Polish and then German translations and have grown to cover 15 language pairs,  and we’ve added reviewers, DTP and even a print shop, all in the same building. We have a great team, I love being in this business, with all the shades and colors of translations.

Q: How did you and TWB meet?

I first connected with TWB at a conference, where we started talking and I got very interested in their mission. I found it a great intersection of languages and doing good in the world. TextPartner didn’t have a big budget to donate, so we brainstormed internally on other ways to support. Both Lucjan and I like riding our MTB bikes in the mountains. We spoke to John Terninko, the executive director of the European Language Industry Association (ELIA) about doing a fund-raising ride from our hometown of Katowice, Poland, to arrive in Budapest in time for the ELIA conference on October 2. He thought it was a great idea. So Lucjan and I started calling people we knew who were cyclists, including Raymund Prins, a former pro cyclist who runs a translation agency with a similar model to ours. I spoke with TWB’s director of fund-raising, the amazing and resourceful Anne-Marie Colliander Lind, who gave us great suggestions. I set up the OnOurBikes.info website, and we did that first 400km ride, arriving in Budapest after 4 days. We had never before tried riding such long distances, but with just 3 people, one of whom just did one day, we raised $1800. That was just short of our goal of $2000, but we easily made it up at the conference with the help of the ELIA participants. We ended up with 21 sponsors, and had enough to pay for two TWB translators in Kenya for 1 year!

Q: So you kept going with the rides!

Yes, TWB was happy with the result, and so we decided to continue with the idea, with events once per year. Last year in 2013 we tried a longer route, to go across Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and back to Poland, for a total of 600 km in 4 days – our team was getting bigger and we were getting more fit! My wife Ewa, also part of the TextPartner management team, took up MTB cycling especially to join us for the event. We had wonderful support along the way. For example, Răzvan Costache, the founder of Avalon Media, had friends in a Romanian town where we were stopping. We spent the night with them and they welcomed us like part of the family.

Q: What have been the greatest challenges during the rides?

For the 2013 ride, our sponsors donated $5 per km and we got to $3000. We didn’t want to stop there, so we offered, if sponsors would donate extra, then we would ride extra sponsored kilometers in a place of their choice. Sponsors could choose the location on the website, and the majority chose the Alps. On the first day in the Alps, I got carried away and wanted to show off my stamina. I went up a famous pass in Austria, to an altitude of 2000m; then down on easy-to-ride asphalt and back up again to 2300m. Suddenly, the altitude got to me and I completely ran out of energy. Luckily, there was an Austrian shelter hut. A kind guy from the former Yugoslavia shared his schnapps, we told stories and had hot soup. I thought I was okay to go back. But on the way down, my bike tires slipped, and I fell. With the adrenaline, I felt little pain at the time, but later that night, discovered I had broken ribs. I’ll be more careful next time!

Another kind of challenge is more political. During that same 2013 ride, there was a Ukranian rider with us, Egor Agnaev from Promova, Ukraine, who traveled nineteen hours on the train to ride the Ukrainian segment with us. Because Ukraine is not in the EU, it’s very difficult for them to get visas to travel in Europe.  So Egor could only go with us as far as the Ukraine border. It was sad to see him leave our ride, for us personally and for our fund-raising!

Q: What are the plans for 2014?

Our 2014 ride is a “Baltic Loop,” starting April 18 in Poland and finishing May 3rd in Poland. We ride through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, then take the ferry to Finland, ride across Finland, take another ferry to Sweden, ride south to Karlskrona, Sweden, and take the ferry back across to Poland. It is 2,300 km! We’re asking sponsors to donate $5 for each km. We have 360km sponsored to date, and you can see our sponsors and progress on the OnOurBikes.info site.

Q: How do you publicize your fund-raisers?

We have learned a lot from our previous 2 rides. We’re very focused now on spreading the message about TWB and what the goal is, in as many languages as possible. Having our own print shop makes it easy to print brochures for media purposes. Before the ride, on March 28, there is a translation and localization conference in Warsaw, where we will do a presentation about the Baltic Loop ride and about TWB’s Kenyan training center. In each of the countries we cross, we’ll have an agency partner willing to translate press kits and send to local media. These include Diskusija from Lithuania, Tilde from Latvia, Interlex Translations from Estonia, Maris Multilingual from Finland and Increa.se Consulting from Sweden. We’ll do more media events, and some sponsors will write articles in their  languages for local media. We now have an article in Dutch, English and Slovenian, with plans for at least ten other languages! During the 2013 ride, our riders were accompanied by a car pulling a caravan that had all the comforts of home, and we put sponsors’ logos on it. The Baltic Loop is 2,300 km, so too expensive to bring a caravan, but we are building a toy caravan that can be towed with a bike and will also have space for sponsored logos. TWB’s Anne-Marie will be throwing a party for us when we arrive in Växjö, which will be great fun. During the Latvia part of the ride, we’ll stop in Riga to attend the ELIA Networking Days, and meet with media there. We are planning to post photos as we go along the ride, on the OnOurBikes.info website, and we use Twitter all the time to broadcast updates about changes to the website. In fact, we’ll be tweeting soon about 2 new cyclists joining in from Latvia and at least 4 others from Estonia!

Q: Just curious – why the .info domain for the OnOurBikes website?

Our sponsors are from all over the world, and so we wanted a country-neutral domain. And conveniently, .info is 3 time less expensive than .pl!

Q: What are your hopes for future fund-raising?

We want to keep contributing to TWB as much as possible. TWB gives people knowledge to improve their lives, using the tool of translation. TWB is involved in lots of projects in Kenya which need funding, like the training center, and making Wikipedia content available on mobile phones. It’s so important to make this information accessible in the local language. Through OnOurBikes, we want to support TWB  translators. So we dream of being able to raise more funds as part of an open, international initiative, with possibly mirror events in other world regions. We’ve had some interest from Asian countries, and if we can share our knowledge on how to get organized for the rides, be attractive to sponsors and do the publicity, we can help them join in. We can provide our time, as Marek Pawelec, one of our expert Polish translators did, by going to Kenya to TWB’s center, to train students on CAT tools. We’re also interested in working with more translation industry associations such as GALA and TAUS, to let them know about OnOurBikes. And we hope all your readers will visit our site at OnOurBikes.info and help us spread the word as well.

Thank you, Marek, for sharing your story, and for all that you do for Translators Without Borders!

 

 

Jacek Sierakowski is a medical writer, translator and a journalist. He’s one of Translators without Borders’ top contributors with more than 160,000 words donated in the English -> French language pair.

Hi Jacek! Tell us a bit about yourself and what made you volunteer for Translators without Borders (TWB)?
I grew up in Africa. Later, as a medical student, I was an intern in an African hospital, in a remote bush area. I realized how local people desperately needed help. And I was not even in a war zone. I intended to come back later as a doctor, either in a governmental or a non-governmental context. Life had other plans for me.

Later on, for various reasons, I slowly switched medical practice for medical writing and translating. And it naturally brought me to TWB, as a way of achieving my earlier goal of volunteering in developing countries.

I enjoy translating for TWB. I feel useful, bringing my little contribution to good causes.

The deadlines are usually comfortable, with the understandable exceptions of crisis situations, and the clients thank me. It reminds me of the good old days when I started translating, in another millennium. We did not have CAT tools or internet, not even computers! But the relationships with the clients were human and respectful, and the rhythms slower.

Any particular memorable TWB project?
I am particularly touched by the stories of the field volunteers. I also like translating texts about obstetrics, it was my favorite part of my African medical experience.

What challenges, if any, are you facing or did you face as a Translator without Borders?
The internal abbreviations, acronyms and references are sometimes challenging. And the authors are not always able to explain them, being on a mission somewhere around the world without email connection.

What do you enjoy doing to take a break from translation?
I try to compensate the long computer hours by physical exercise: running, bicycling, Nordic walking, yoga. Or by taking care of the roses in my little garden.

 

In early November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) wreaked havoc across the central Philippines. For this current issue, we have decided to profile a few members of our Typhoon Translation Team who have helped translate survivors’ life-saving messages from and into their local languages, such as Tagalog, Cebuano and Waray. Lois Goldman and Lysander E. Canlas –Sandy- tell us about their experience as key mediators between the survivors, the Digital Humanitarian Network and humanitarian aid partners.

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

Lois: I was born in California, to an American father and a Philippine mother. When I was four, I moved to Philippines, where I picked up Tagalog and Cebuano.

I absolutely love learning about different cultures. I took Arabic at college for two semesters and I have also studied Croatian for a year! I joined the military as a linguist. I am currently living in Hawaii and I serve in the reserve. I am also a language consultant for a private company.

I have a 3-year-old son, Tristian.

Sandy: I was born and grew up in Philippines. My mother was an English Professor in college there. I took my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, and then I became very much interested in computer programming. At the age of 27, I moved to the United States, where I currently live. I first came to the US to learn more on the field of computers, but with time and the different jobs, I became an investment advisor. The 11-S killed the market and I lost my source of income. At the time, my sister was an interpreter in San Francisco and she encouraged me to be involved as a translator. So I became an interpreter in New Jersey. I moved to South California, where there is a huge population from the Philippines. As a translator I work with all types of industries and as an interpreter, I mainly work with lawyers and insurance companies –my sister and I used to say that our livelihood depends on crime rates!

Can you tell us a bit about your experience with the catastrophe in Philippines?

Lois: It was a very emotional experience. I had never worked with Translators without Borders before the typhoon. At the time of the catastrophe, I knew I had to help in some way.

Via a Skype window – by means of the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) – and also searching in different social media, such as Twitter and reports online, I started translating emergency messages from Tagalog and Cebuano into English. For example, if someone was injured or was in need of food or water, I translated their messages and forwarded them to humanitarian aid, so as the much needed help and medical assistance was provided. It was an extreme situation: no food reached the survivors for almost a week; they were starving and getting sick. I translated the messages sent by local people and then; the DHN Network sent the translated messages to a Partner, so as to reach for help.

I was very affected by the typhoon since it devastated the area where I grew up. I jumped at a chance to help. I was watching my Skype window to detect any message asking for immediate help.

Sandy: I had contributed with Translators without Borders several times before, so when they joined forces with the Digital Humanitarian Network, I volunteered. We prepared lists of emergency words, so when these were detected, that meant that someone was in need of help.

I monitored tweets in three languages: Cebuano, Tagalog and Waray. Some tweets made no sense at all. Unfortunately, after a few hours following the typhoon, there was a total media blackout; people ran out of batteries and all tweets stopped. After the storm nobody could tweet anymore. It was a helpless feeling. Only silence was there. Even now, communications have not been fully restored. TWB decided to send people to the disaster area. The Disaster Tech Lab is working hard to repair communications. I volunteered to go there and I am deploying to the typhoon disaster area this week!

 

Translators without Borders will be represented at the following events:

Drongo Festival (Utrecht, NL) 25 – 26 September

TWB Fundraiser hosted by Lionbridge: Celebrating the Diversity of Africa (Silicon Valley): 14 October

Localization World Silicon Valley (San Jose) 14 – 16 October

ATA Annual Conference (Miami) 4 – 7 November

NTIF Annual Conference (Reykjavik) 26 – 27 November

Allison Kozicharow, Board Member, WiRED International Health Information and Education 

“Language is central to all of our educational efforts. Health education material is useless to people who cannot understand the language in which it is written. TWB greatly extends the reach of our programs and enables us to fully serve these remote areas.”

 

Dr Doug Quarry, Group Medical Director, Medical Information and Analysis at International SOS:

“Good communication of medical advice is absolutely critical if Ebola is going to be contained. It must be viewed as one of the weapons the global community has in the battle against the disease. In an effort to support the vital work to stop Ebola, we have made our educational materials publicly available across the world.  It is extremely important to provide medically accurate and easy to understand Ebola information in a community’s local language. Our posters, leaflets and video materials are being used across West Africa: In shops, hotels and banks. In clinics, hospitals and mining sites. They are also present in airports and at a number of checkpoints.  The translations are being requested by client organisations, regional and national governments plus charities and NGOs in West Africa and further afield. When Translators Without Borders asked if they could translate our medical content into several local languages for non-profit organisations, we immediately said yes. The use of these materials would simply not be so widespread without the work of Translators without Borders to help get this medical advice to the people who need it most.”

 

Chris Thompson, President and Chairman of the Board, Humanity Road, when honoring TWB with the DaVinci Award: 

“As Typhoon Haiyan approached the coastline of the Philippines, Humanity Road reached out in partnership with Translators without Borders for assistance.  Their response to our request was fast and within hours we had our first translation assistance.  Lois Goldman and Noemi Katuin were assigned to our team and their support continued for weeks. They helped monitor social media in language and translated text and video messages emerging in social media.  The support provided by Translators without Borders helped save lives and also provided message relay support to reunite families who were rescued.”

 

Niels Peter Rygaard, DPA authorized psychologist, founder of FairStart, which trains orphanage workers around the world:

“On behalf of www.fairstartglobal.com, we wish to thank you for your fantastic work, assisting child psychiatry professor Kamikado Kazuhiro, Nagano University, in his efforts to improve foster care and orphanage systems in Japan. Thanks to TWB, our caregiver and leader training programs are now available in Japanese at www.fairstartglobaljapan.org . Due to cultural barriers, the process of de-institutionalization and starting foster care systems in Japan has been very difficult, and the suicide rate among former foster care children in Japan has been high. This is a major concern for Dr. Kamikado, and we feel reassured that the use of www.fairstartglobal.com programs will support his efforts to provide Japanese children with quality care educated foster parents.

We also thank TWB for other translations, and they have yielded major results.  For example, the Spanish version is now used in Spanish speaking areas, and recently Chilean Government has asked us to train trainers in the Spanish program version. Thanks again TWB for your invaluable help to create quality care for the 100 million children who grow up without parental care!”

   

Words received and delivered

After receiving in February a record 873,735 words to be translated in the Translators without Borders Workspace powered by ProZ.com, May 2013 represented the highest volume ever delivered, with a total of 766,699 words.

From January 2011 to June 2013, our volunteer translators have delivered 10.8 million words to humanitarian organizations. During the last 12 months our workspace processed 6.61 million words and delivered 6.49 million words. This represents increments of 15.0% and 27.5% respectively over the 12-month period reported in our last newsletter.

 

 

 Translators

The team of professionals approved by Translators without Borders reached 1,752 by the end of June, with a growth of 93 translators (5.6%) during the last 4 months. Since this is significantly lower than the growth in words received for translation, it serves as a signal that we need more translators recruited to cope with the expected demand.

Our top-five volunteers are: Eric Ragu, with an outstanding record of 157K words, followed by Edgar Marie-Hélène Cadieux (130K words), Ashutosh Mitra (116K words), Gail Desautels (103K words) and Ishaklamia (90K words).

Language pairs

During the last 12 months our translators accepted volunteer assignments in 94 language pairs. Top language pair was English to French, representing 19.7% of the operation, followed by French to English (15.8%), English to Spanish (12.5%), Spanish to English (3.3) and English to Arabic (3.2%).

 

Overall, the top three pairs represented 48.0% of the words posted for translation in the last 12 months, a slight increment in respect to the 47.3% recorded for the 12 months ending in February 2013. English to Spanish grew from 9.4% to 12.5% (this is welcome, as this is the pair with the most volunteers) and English to Arabic is growing faster than Spanish to English and could overtake it as the fourth pair in the operation.

 Clients

A record 100 humanitarian organizations requested our services during the last 12 months, a 12% increase with respect to the number reported in our last newsletter.

Top client is Wikipedia project, followed by Médicos sin Fronteras (Spain), and then Acción contra el Hambre (also from Spain) and Action contre la Faim, two branches of the same humanitarian organization. Then comes Médecins Sans Frontières from Switzerland.

 

We have introduced some new processes and capabilities for the Workspace. Please let us know what you think!

Service agreements for translators

We have added service agreements to our process in order to protect the privacy of content and ensure confidentiality.  Translators acting as Translators without Borders (TWB) volunteers now will be asked to endorse a service agreement stating:

• The service provider agrees to treat as confidential all texts and other intellectual property of the client received or accessed in the Translators without Borders Workspace, and to take steps to protect that confidentiality.
• TWB volunteers are free to accept or decline any task offered to them. Once a task is accepted, it should be delivered with the same quality and dedication given to a paid job.

Since these commitments are included in ProZ.com professional guidelines {http://www.proz.com/professional-guidelines} for translation service providers, many of our volunteers have already endorsed then. Only translators who have not endorsed these guidelines will be asked to do so, or to endorse a TWB specific service agreement.

Files can now be uploaded in comments

It is possible now to upload a file in the comments posted on job pages. This will help translators who have already uploaded a file and marked the task as complete, and then need to release a new version, for instance because an error was found and corrected. It was previously necessary to reopen the task, but now the translator can simply upload the new file with a comment. This will also be useful for sharing glossaries, translation memories and other reference documents.

Enhanced dashboards

Both clients and translators will benefit from the enhanced dashboards accessible from the ‘home’ menu option. On their dashboard, clients will find two tabs for ‘active jobs’ and ‘overdue jobs,’ while the options for translators are ‘active assigned tasks,’ ‘available tasks’ and ‘completed tasks’. In all cases a list will be presented, and clicking on the link will lead to the corresponding job or task.

Work orders can be searched by keywords

There is a ‘search work order’ button in the ‘work orders’ -> ‘view work orders’ menu option for clients who need to find a previously posted work order. A new ‘keywords’ option has been added to allow for the search of work orders for keywords in titles and descriptions. Some clients have posted a lot of work orders, so an enhanced search feature will be welcome. Other search filters include ‘order status’ and ‘project.’

 

With some 275 lawyers working in 11 major US cities and a network of affiliates around the world, Epstein Becker Green (EBG) is ideally placed to help international organizations such as Translators without Borders (TWB). In recognition of its professional responsibility to the communities that it serves, EBG’s corporate ethos encourages attorneys and other staff to work on pro bono projects and to volunteer their time on community-based projects. In 2012 alone, EBG’s attorneys spent some 5,300 hours on more than 100 pro bono projects, including some crucial work for TWB.

Legal advice around the globe

Aime Dempsey, a senior attorney working in EBG’s New York office, explains: “Epstein Becker Green was founded in 1973 to serve the healthcare industry. Since then it has developed into one of the largest and best-known legal practices dedicated to the healthcare and life sciences sector. Translators without Borders’ focus on health information fits well with this key area. Our other four core practice areas are: labor and employment, litigation, corporate services, and employee benefits, and our international network means we have ready access to top-flight lawyers and legal advice around the globe.

“Our pro bono program encourages attorneys to focus on projects of personal interest or related to our specific areas of practice. We can identify these on our own or through the structured pro bono opportunities made available by the firm and through partnerships with other organizations. My contribution to Translators without Borders started early this year when I became aware of TWB through its Program Director Rebecca Petras – who is my sister. I had been unaware that so much critical health, education and crisis-related information was failing to reach underprivileged parts of Africa and India owing to language barriers – yet these are the very communities that are in most need of this information. Rebecca’s passion for and commitment to Translators without Borders is inspirational.”

Believing in the power of knowledge

“I passionately believe in the power of knowledge, and in trying to get assistance directly to those who need it most. I love being able to assist TWB, which has such crucial global reach. Though I am not fluent in any other languages myself, I am pleased at the thought of important information getting to people in their own languages, so that they can augment their own knowledge on their own terms. I am delighted to be able to assist Translators without Borders with its mission in all ways that I can. I have consulted with TWB on a couple of matters this year, most recently on a proposal to adjust the size of the Board of Directors and make some potential future adjustments to its by-laws and governance. If I can play a small part in this inspirational organization from my office in New York, that’s great – I love it!”

 

Norlha was founded in 2005, in Switzerland, and today has delegations in several European countries. This secular NGO, whose membership consists mainly of private individuals from all walks of life, provides development assistance through various projects in Tibetan areas of China, in Bhutan and in Nepal, in cooperation with local partners, with an aim to help communities achieve self-sufficiency. Norlha works with Translators without Borders for the translation of documents mainly to and from French and English, as well as French into German and Spanish.

Norlha’s Partnerships Manager and Gender Equality Coordinator, Cosima Thommen, spoke with us about her work and the NGO’s partnership with Translators without Borders. “I seek out project financing and establish partnerships with organizations that share our vision and goals, in order to create a bridge of solidarity between the Swiss Alps and the Himalayas. My team and I also develop a regional program for Himalayan women which promotes gender equality, strengthening the role of women in the region’s development. Before my current position, I spent a year and a half in the Tibetan regions of China as Norlha’s Program Director for China. My degrees are in project management and Chinese, so being able to contribute to the improvement of living conditions in the Himalayas with Norlha is a great pleasure!”

Thanks to Translators without Borders’ work for Norlha, the NGO has been able to reduce their operating expenses, freeing up funds that may then go directly to Norlha projects. As Thommen explains, “Translators without Borders has helped us improve the quality of our communications and our financing efforts, thanks to well-written texts with correct terminology. Recently, Translators without Borders helped us translate a presentation of one of our projects in Nepal, and with that, we were able to gain initial financing for it! TWB also helped us translate our 2012 annual report from French into English, an excellent communication tool that we will be able to use to introduce Norlha to even more people.”

Norlha benefits from local personnel in the Himalayas for translation into regional dialects. “We mainly [request Translators without Borders to] translate from French into English, German, and Spanish, and from English into French. In the regions where we work, there are dozens of local dialects. With our personnel on the ground, we are able to translate documents for improving knowledge on hygiene, environmental protection, and so forth.” These communication tools are essential towards meeting Norlha’s goals of improved healthcare, nutrition, education, and the environmental conditions for indigenous populations.