Category: Uncategorized

Our interviewee for this issue is Sue Fortescue, Volunteer Manager at Translators without Borders (TWB), who has been actively recruiting ‘non-translator’ volunteers via different media. Sue told us how her professional and personal goals come together in her volunteer work.

“I came to translation quite late in life, after spending the first part of my career as an English Language teacher (in Italy, Nepal and the UK) and the second part as an IT Manager (in Belgium and the US).  My first degree was in Italian and French, and I also have an MA in Applied Linguistics and an MSc in Knowledge-Based Systems.

I retired to the UK in 2011 and spent some time re-familiarising myself with the land of my birth.  Then I began to miss the international atmosphere in which I had spent most of my life so, as a retirement project, I registered for the MA in AudioVisual Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. I followed the course part-time over two years, and thoroughly enjoyed learning new skills and meeting interesting people.  Now I am using those skills to translate a play, written by an Italian friend, – and we have high hopes that it might be produced in London one of these days. Watch this space!

We have ‘Professionalisation Talks’ once a week, when language industry professionals come and talk to us about their careers.  Towards the end of 2014, the talk was given by Andrew Bredenkamp, Chair of TWB – and I was hooked!  I emailed to ask if I could help, was interviewed early in 2015, and was invited to take up the position of Volunteer Manager.  I spend approximately two days a week replying to the volunteers who fill in the ‘Other Volunteer’ application form (i.e. not translators) and I LOVE it!

My job involves emailing and skyping people all over the world who want to help TWB.  They have a huge range of skills and very interesting backgrounds.  As well as translators, we need web engineers, fundraisers, graphic designers – a host of skills!” 

To volunteer, just fill in the application form on our website:

Translators:  http://translatorswithoutborders.org/volunteers/translator-app

Other volunteers: http://translatorswithoutborders.org/Volunteers/other-Volunteer-App

Target shooting

In paper: The Economist, every week!  I also belong to a book club and enjoy discussing books with my friends.  We recently read Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, an inspiring story about the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda.

Open-air activity: Walking by the sea with friends

With friends: Concerts, operas, art galleries, museums

Philanthropy: is an important part of my life.  I volunteer with Samaritans, a charity that provides emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress, despair or suicidal thoughts.  I am also a member of Soroptimist International (SI) (www.soroptimistinternational.org) and have belonged to SI clubs in the United States and Belgium as well as in the UK.

Fairstep is a European Union initiative officially founded in October, 2012. The project aims to collect humanitarian, and environmental projects from all EU countries, and introduce them online.

The vision for Fairstep originally came to its founder, Antonios, in 2005. As he described for us: “In more than 25 years traveling around the world, especially in Europe, I had the great luck to meet and talk with many people(s). It was and is still a magnificent experience to learn from others, to see the world with their eyes. But there was one point I faced everywhere: people do not really know each other, neither in their small neighborhood, nor in the wider world. This is not only a pity, but it makes life more difficult. The interesting thing is, if you give people information, explain circumstances and transfer emotions from others, they are mostly pleased to get them and are keenly interested. And that is why we say today: Closeness creates understanding, distance causes misunderstanding!”

Antonios’ next challenge was to develop an organizational approach that could expand his realization and bring it to a wider audience. “How could we share differing information about all the other peoples, with all the peoples? If many people act a bit, all together we can move mountains, and if we combine information with charity, we become a team and help others.”

Fairstep’s process collects projects from around the European Union, and gives all donors the possibility to vote on which projects should be sponsored. Donors are not allowed to vote for their own country’s projects, or projects in neighboring countries. As such, they must learn about projects from more distant, probably lesser-known countries, thus gaining information and reality-based experiences from them. Antonios explains: “As a result, we hope to create rapprochement, and in the future, live together in respect and dignity, as well as with tolerance and understanding.”

Fairstep’s partnership with Translators without Borders began in December 2012, when its website, first in German and English, needed translation into all official EU languages. The Danish translation is already available, and several other languages are in progress. As Antonios remarks: “This basic translation work is absolutely necessary, because everyone in the EU should have the possibility to understand the aim and message of Fairstep, and as such, have the chance to be an active part of its development.”

The Translators without Borders Workspace powered by ProZ.com had reached its record of words processed in June 2012, when 577,315 words were posted by humanitarian organizations and later translated by our volunteers. This record was broken in January 2013 and then shattered in February 2012, when 603,659 and 873,735 words were posted respectively.

From January 2011 To February 2013, our volunteer translators have delivered 8 million words to humanitarian organizations. During the last 12 months our workspace processed 4.70 million words and delivered 4.35 million words. This represents increments of 22.3% and 17.0% respectively over the 12-months period reported in our last newsletter.

  

Translators

The team of professionals approved by Translators without Borders reached 1659 by the end of February, with a growth of 59 translators during the last 3 months.

While we still have excess capacity in English to Spanish, our most populated pair, the continuous growth in demand for translations put pressure on the need for new volunteers, especially in African and Indian languages.

Our top-five volunteers are: Edwin Miner, who has donated an amazing 133,015 words, followed Edgar Marie-HélèneCadieux (119,447 words), eric ragu (98,802 words), gail desautels (79,082 words), and Ashutosh Mitra (who translated 75,691 words from English to Hindi).

Language pairs

During the last 12 months our translators accepted volunteer assignments in 92 language pairs. Top language pair was English to French, representing 19.9% of the operation. The next three pairs were French to English (18.1%), English to Spanish (9.4%) and Spanish to English (4.3).

 

 

Overall, the language pairs beyond the top-4 represented 48.4% of the total, up from the 48.1% reported in the last newsletter. 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 most people in need of translation help.

 

Clients

A total of 89 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 100 critical medical Wikipedia articles into as many languages as possible (with a starting goal of 100 languages). The project is currently active into 38 languages and more than 130 translated articles are already live in the local versions of Wikipedia, and several others are already translated and await integration in Wikipedia.

Next in line come Médicos sin Fronteras from 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.

 

As shown in the article on numbers included in this newsletter, the volume of words requested by our humanitarian clients and delivered by our amazing volunteer keeps growing and the Translators without Borders (TwB) Workspace powered by ProZ.com has proved very scalable, with almost 900K words handled last February with a minimum of project management.

But then you realize that the help we have delivered is small when compared to the translation needs that block the access of so many fellow human beings to health and food, education and hope, and it becomes clear that we need to be working hard to keep improving.

And since the humanitarian organizations that require the translations, the volunteers who deliver them, and Translators without Borders in the coordination role are all part of the same humanitarian process, we would like to discuss with all of you the path ahead and ask for your comments, feedback and help.

The following areas have been identified for improvement:

1. The clients’ experience when they
   • access the platform to post a translation need, to communicate with the translators and to retrieve the translation.
   • access Translators without Borders to ask for admission into the system, creation of new profiles and any other administrative request.
2. The volunteer translators’ experience regarding
   • their access to the TWB Workspace for evaluating and accepting translation requests, communicating with the client, other translators and the project manager, and delivering the translations.
   • the satisfaction, recognition, promotion and other benefits associated with their participation in TWB.
3. The quality of the translations produced in the workspace, including
   • the use and sharing at a client level of translation memories and glossaries.
   • the activity of editors within the TWB Workspace including, among others, the problems of selecting the editors, modifying the workflow to include their work, deciding in what jobs they will be involved and providing recognition to the editors.
4. The scalability of the operation, including
   • recruiting good translators, especially in language pairs with strong demand and in those where knowledge is needed and our capacity small or nonexistent, such as many languages of Africa and India. Recruiting involves the promotion needed to get volunteers and screening the volunteers to identify the good translators among them.
   • the promotion of our services among humanitarian organizations to be able to provide more help in language pairs where we have strong capacity, such as English to Spanish.
   • the ability of engaging volunteer project managers for the management of certain projects.

The following steps have been adopted for allowing clients and volunteers to provide feedback and involvement:

1. A survey was made available for our translators, where the questions were translated into Spanish, French and Arabic. This survey received the feedback from 441 volunteers. Results will be made public in our next newsletter.
2. A similar survey for humanitarian clients will be made available shortly.
3. A set of private forums have been created for the discussion of some of these issues. If you are interested in participating please contact us at [email protected]

 

A lot has happened since my last report on the Translators without Borders Health Translation Center in Nairobi, Kenya. The center is doing very well. We have moved into the main building on the BTL campus, which has been our home since July 2012. Our team of Swahili health translators and editors now have around 120 square meters (1300 sq. feet) of office space, which allows for further growth.  We have also introduced translation memory technology, and we have installed high-speed internet. These are three very important factors for the further development of the center.

MemoQ Training

A very important event in the development of the center was the memoQ training week in mid-January. Marek Pawelec, who is one of the biggest memoQ experts and a gifted trainer, came over from Poland and spent a full week with the team, and since then all work is only done using this tool. The translators had never before used this type of technology and they just love using it!

When asked about his perspective, Marek made the following comments:
“The Nairobi team impressed me with their willingness to learn, attention to detail and the number of languages they know – some of them speak six or seven languages. Each task was performed meticulously and they treated translation very seriously, often disputing the best way to translate any particular sentence or phrase. And given the fact that mastering a computer aided translation tool requires assimilating a lot of completely new and complex concepts, the speed with which they learned was impressive. Some of the more complex tasks required repetitions, but others were clear just after first explanation. And I really liked their enthusiasm – as practicing translators they very quickly understood the benefits of using a CAT tool for their work and I was under the impression that they instantly loved the term base feature. ”

At the end of the training week our translation center manager Paul Warambo and our driver Elijah Wambua took Marek to the Nairobi National Park to show him lions, elephants, and giraffes – animals that do not roam wild in Poland, or anywhere else in Europe.

After the training week, Marek has been back virtually, providing further training during several Skype sessions.  On behalf of the team, and of all of us at TWB, I would like to take this opportunity and the platform of this newsletter to again thank Marek!

Uchaguzi

The most exciting recent project was the Uchaguzi project, where our team was involved in a historic moment in the history of Kenya: the 2013 presidential elections. In 2008 over 1,000 citizens were killed during post-election violence. In order to make the 2013 elections more transparent and less violent a web-based platform was set up by the social entreprise Ushahidi (which is the Swahili word for ‘testimony’). They built a web-based platform to easily crowd-source information using different channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web. One activity is called Uchaguzi, which means ‘election’ in Swahili. Uchaguzi facilitates unprecedented collaboration between citizens, election observers, humanitarian response agencies, civil society, community-based organizations, law enforcement agencies, and digital humanitarians to monitor elections in near-real time. All Kenyan citizens were invited to report whatever they wanted to report about, for example when there was violence in their neighbourhood.

Although Uchaguzi had quite a few volunteers to translate messages from a variety of Kenyan languages into English, they decided that our trained team of translators should take the lead in this project and they worked in 6-hour shifts around the clock for 8 days at a stretch. They translated many thousands of messages into English, which were then evaluated in the Uchaguzi Situation Room. Our translators were very committed and worked hard – when it was busy they ignored the fact that their shift had ended and just carried on, even during the night.  They were excited about being involved in this project and in making a valuable and very relevant contribution during this historic moment in their country. I was in the translation center the 2 weeks before the project started, and was happy to have been able to help prepare and organize it. I could really feel the excitement for this project, but also the anxiety and concerns about what might happen. The project went very well. Uchaguzi played a role in increasing transparency and, as a result, reduced violence. The team deserves a very big compliment for their commitment and dedication to this very special project! And for any Kenyans in the diaspora who read this and who feel they should support our efforts, they should visit our website, click on the Donate button, and be generous…

The HEAT Project

The team is currently working on a project called Health Education And Training (HEAT), a volume of half a million words of training materials for community health workers. This material was originally written by the Open University (in the UK) for the government of Ethiopia, where it is already being used.  The process is as follows: first the texts are edited by volunteers from Content Rules, the editing company of Val Swisher, one of the members of the Board of Directors of TWB. The editors take out any references that are specific to Ethiopia and make it more general. They also simplify the text. The end result is then translated by TWB’s health translators at our Nairobi translation center. All work is carefully checked and edited, both linguistically and medically. This project is partly subsidized by a grant from the Open University.

100 x 100 Wikipedia Project

Another exciting project the team is involved in is the 100 x 100 Wikipedia Project, which involves the translation into 100+ languages of the 100+ most widely read Wikipedia articles on health issues. The project is well under way – dozens of articles have been translated into a still growing number of languages. All Swahili work is done by our translators. This part of the 100 x 100 Wikipedia Project is funded by The Indigo Trust.

Other languages
Of course, Africa is much larger than Kenya, and Swahili is an important language, spoken by 60-100 million people in East Africa, but no less than 2,000 other languages are also spoken in Africa. It is TWB’s mission to create translation capacity by providing training to translators who live in areas with the sorry combination of poverty, poor public health, health information in the wrong language and an underdeveloped translation infrastructure. Our training program, which by now has proven to be successful, is suitable to be used for other languages.  Translation techniques are not language-specific, basic medical know-how is also similar across all languages. Of course, any language-specific parts are crucial, and these have to be given by an expert of the language(s) concerned.

During a recent conference in Tanzania, where I was invited to talk about translation as a vital factor in improving public health, I learned that for example in Uganda we could be quite effective. Four major languages are used in this country and a training session for some people with strong language skills for each of these languages would create translation capacity (or expand the existing translators’ base) and they could then be involved in doing the work that has to be done. In Uganda a lot of health information is available, but mainly in English. It would greatly help the local Village Health Teams (VHTs) to be much more effective if translated information would be available. A relatively small investment in the cost of translation would have a huge return because it will reduce the effort by health workers who can then dedicate more of their time to what they are trained to do: providing health care. It is a bit early, but who knows: Next Stop Kampala?

 

 

The idea of a global village, united by technology rather than divided by linguistic barriers, has moved a step closer to realization, thanks to an innovative Web platform developed by Dotsub, a New York-based enabling technology company. This browser-based tool enables quick and easy time coding and captioning of online video created in any source language, and then translation via subtitling (soon dubbing) into any other language.  This technology facilitates the sharing of knowledge and information across linguistic barriers. With this facility, the Dotsub platform is making a significant contribution to Translators without Borders’ (TWB) mission to support humanitarian work around the world.

Innovative technology

The inspiration for the Dotsub platform derives from company Founder and Chairman Michael L. Smolens and is based on his 33 years’ experience of setting up and running cutting-edge manufacturing businesses, employing thousands of people in high-risk, emerging economies. His understanding of how to do business in countries with cultures as diverse as Mexico and Haiti, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Russia, India, Pakistan and Turkey, led him to realize the extent to which language can pose a barrier to communication. “Language underpins everything,” he points out, “but the dominance of major languages such as English, French and Chinese is an impediment to information sharing with peoples of other tongues. It can constitute an impenetrable barrier rather than promote understanding. You can foster far greater understanding, respect and warmth if you can communicate with people in their native language or dialect. Dotsub enables this.

“I was convinced that the future was going to be in video and set up Dotsub myself, with no outside investors, to focus particularly on the 94% of people in the world who don’t speak English as a first language. It took two and a half years to design the technology that is the architecture for the platform. One of our first clients was TED, who used Dotsub to launch and power the TED Open Translation Project.

“One of my favorite sayings is that ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’ – so how many words must a video be worth – particularly if the content relates to health or education or other crucial knowledge that less fortunate communities are often denied? Dotsub enables video and film to be translated through sub-titles and captions into any language or dialect for viewing in any region of the world.”

 A  vision for a better world

Since Michael Smolens launched Dotsub in 2007, its client list has grown rapidly, including multinational corporations such as GE, Cisco, Adobe and Boeing. The US army is a major client as is Bank of America. The company’s commercial success means that it has been able to make a significant pro bono contribution to numerous non-profit organizations including Translators without Borders. Michael’s huge respect for the work of TWB also led him to volunteer as a board member. He explains that “In Dotsub’s work for TWB, our aim is to aid dissemination of information to the most far-flung localities by removing language barriers to cross-cultural communication. Such global reach can make the world a better place – particularly if we can help and empower women by providing information on health, hygiene and education, which they can then share with their communities.

“I’m a fanatic about the preservation of language. Where language is a barrier, Dotsub is an enabling tool. I’m convinced that, as technology evolves and more and more people have access to video, there will be a huge opportunity for online video translation in terms of promoting access to information and engagement with ideas. This could have a profound impact on the world by communicating important messages to hundreds of millions of people.

“Dotsub is a for-profit company and commercial enterprises pay for use of our platform. However, when organizations such as Translators without Borders have important stories to tell, Dotsub is totally free. TWB can use our tool in any way it sees fit and is doing many wonderful things with it: videos for sex workers in Africa; translation of cell phone videos from witnesses to the Arab Spring; videos in 22 local Indian dialects for Healthphone…to name but a few. To me TWB couldn’t be a more perfect organization to be involved with. Everything it believes in mirrors what my life is all about. Working with Translators without Borders is a personal journey that I love, and I will do anything I can to assist.”   More at http://dotsub.com

When I first saw information that Translators without Borders was looking for a volunteer trainer to provide MemoQ training in Nairobi, Kenya, my first thought was, “Wow, Kenya in January.” Then I found the TWB web page and read about the organization’s mission and goals. I decided that I could afford to give up a week’s earnings and provide some free work instead, so I volunteered. I wasn’t the only one, but in the end I was selected for the job.

The TWB goal is to support  humanitarian work around the world by providing translation of all kinds of information into local languages, with one emphasis being on medical and healthcare texts. One of the organization’s goals in Kenya is to provide healthcare information for everybody; how to recognize malaria, how to avoid HIV infection, what to do when someone has a seizure, how to avoid risks during pregnancy. While this kind of information may seem like general knowledge to most of us, it is not so in the poorer regions of world, and providing it to people in their native language markedly lowers the access barriers and helps to save lives.

To achieve its goal TWB employs a growing host of volunteer translators, but there is also a team of translators working in Nairobi, Kenya, translating into local African languages – at the moment mainly into Swahili. Since the need is great and the budget is tight, one of the important factors in the translation process is efficiency. One of the best ways to improve the efficiency of translation is to employ translation memory technology (computer aided translation, CAT tools) and terminology management. The basic idea behind CAT tools is that once you translate a sentence, it is being stored in a special database called a translation memory (TM), and when you encounter the same sentence in another text, you can use this previous translation. TMs can also help with similar sentences and it is easy to look for previous translations of words and phrases (concordance). Kilgray Translation Technologies, the Hungarian company behind memoQ, an excellent, user-friendly and powerful CAT software, donated some licenses for the TWB team in Nairobi, but since the people who were supposed to use the tool had no previous experience with that kind of software, some training was required. And that’s where I came in.

The training took five days, 6 hours a day (not counting breaks). While the people I trained displayed relatively high levels of “computer literacy”, they never used any specialized translation software, so we started with an introduction to CAT tools and explanation of concepts like a segment, translation memory, match, etc. Then came the use of memoQ itself – we went through project creation, translation, quality assurance and generation of translated files in target format. Thanks to some previously translated files we were able to practice LiveDocs corpora creation and alignment procedures, translation memory export and import, work with term bases (including import of previously collected glossaries) and terminology extraction. At first everybody was working on the same files, later the group was divided into teams, with every team working on different files, then exchanging the results of their work to pool the resources. The teams were also practicing translation-review-verification workflow: a translation by a team was handed to another team for review and then was imported back to verify and accept/reject the changes using the track changes function. The review was conducted both in memoQ (using .mqxlz files) and in Word (with bilingual RTF tables).

The group consisted of people with different backgrounds, but most of them were linguists and they usually knew more than just two languages – some of them even six or seven. There were translators with some experience on the job and some people who were preparing to strengthen their ranks. While their translation was relatively slow, they treated all the exercises very seriously and I’m confident that they gained a good understanding of how to effectively use memoQ to improve and speed-up their work. Even during the week  I noticed a marked improvement in the translation speed, which may have had to do in part with the growing confidence, but also with the use of available resources: corpora, translation memories and term bases.

In fact, after my return, I have stayed in touch with the group, and I have learned that they have benefited greatly from using memoQ.  It is helping them with several big projects, including the 100×100 Wikipedia project and the HEAT community healthcare training content. It was even helpful to them earlier this month when they led the effort to translate 39,000 SMS messages from citizens around the country during and after the Kenyan elections in an effort to make sure all voices were heard.

My week there was very busy, but I’m very satisfied with what we did, and I hope the results will be long-lasting and beneficial to everyone involved, but mostly to the people who will receive more information in their native languages, helping them to improve the quality of their lives. And as always when conducting a training I learned a lot – as every trainer knows, each day of training brings new questions and new way of looking at the things one thought one already knew inside-out, leading to better understanding of the subject. And since it was the first time I visited Africa, it was also an incredible experience for me – while there was no time for anything but work during the week, on Saturday I was kindly invited for a tour through Nairobi National Park and some other tourist attractions, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I’d like to give my thanks to all the people who made it possible for me to go there: Rebecca Petras and Simon Andriesen from Translators without Borders for choosing me, Paul Warambo—manager of the training center in Nairobi—for the warm welcome and great support on site and all the participants of the training for putting a lot of effort into learning completely new things.

I would also like to express my thanks to everyone who volunteered for this job and to Kilgray Translation Technology company, which not only kindly donated licenses for TWB, but also funded my plane ticket to Nairobi.

 

Hi, Satish! Tell us a bit about yourself and your career.

After 6 years of continuous search and almost equal to research I came into existence as a translator in 1999. None of my family members and my friends knows about this profession, with my own efforts, hard work and self-inspiration I became a translator. Since 13 years I am providing best quality translation services to all my National and International clients. I am satisfied in this profession.

What made you volunteer for Translators without Borders?

Before volunteering for TWB I used to think many times to provide my services free of cost to any non-profit organization for some good cause which helps people all over the world of my language community to lead a good and better life. So as soon as I got offer from TWB I accepted it and started working.

Any particular memorable TWB project or anecdote?

I don’t think so because each and every project of TWB whether it is big or small is very important and special for me. So I give equal importance to all projects.

You’re the only Translator without Borders in the English to Telugu. Why do you think that is? (Is there a smaller demand in that language pair, etc.?)

Yes I am the only translator in my language pair right now, but in future some more translators may join the team. It is not the thing that there is a small demand in this language, but it is because of thought of the people who want to volunteer their services to society in any form.

What issues are most Telugu assignments for TWB addressing? (to give the world an idea of the problems these populations are facing and what kind of information they need access to)

Telugu assignments which I have completed till now addresses about the Mother and child health and also about the health awareness in general for all the public.

What challenges, if any, are you facing or did you face as a Translator without Borders?

As a translator for TWB I generally face the time factor for completing the project. As a busy translator with tight schedules I have to take out time an hour or two daily to complete the work. As I don’t use any CAT tools to work it takes time for me to work on files which are used to work with CAT tools.

What do you enjoy doing to take a break from translation?

Refreshment is very important for each and every person irrespective of their profession, then only productivity increases. Whenever I get some time i spend with my two children and wife.

 

 

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.