Page 13 – Translators without Borders Blog

Volunteer hero: Anne-Marie Colliander Lind

For this second issue of our newsletter, we have interviewed one of our volunteer heroines: Anne-Marie Colliander Lind, who helps to raise the money that makes Translators without Borders go round

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

A: I was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, and I’ve spent most of my summers in Spain. Horseback riding was my first true passion and I’ve competed successfully in show jumping until only a few years ago. Since I was little, my dream was to be bilingual, so maybe that is why I accidentally ended up in the translation industry. I have no qualification or experience as a translator, but I have been involved in the translation industry as a businesswoman since 1989. I am an optimistic, outgoing person; I see opportunities rather than challenges.

Q: What is your role at Translators without Borders?

A: My role is to raise funds by bringing more corporate sponsors to the organization. Translators without Borders has grown as an organization and has all elements well in place, however it does need more financial contributions to get to the next level – to reach out to more NGOs.

Q: What has motivated you to help Translators without Borders?

A: Well, I heard about Translators without Borders some ten years ago and charity has always been present in my family, if even on a small scale. As I’m not qualified to be a volunteer translator, I’m happy I could take another role in supporting the cause.

Q: What is a day in your life like?

A: I am an independent business consultant so I travel a lot to meet clients onsite, which gives me the chance to visit new places and countries. It might be that one week I have to travel to Poland, and then I have to go to Spain. In contrast to my travelling I work a lot from home, which is good, since I am then really close to my family.When I work from home, most of my interactions are over the phone, Skype and via e-mail.

Q: How do you squeeze in time for your volunteer tasks?

A: It comes very naturally, for example, in conversations and interactions during industry conferences. I’m very proud of being a representative of Translators without Borders, so it’s easy for me to share my enthusiasm. Then I normally take a few hours a week to do some more active reach-outs.

Q: What do you consider are the challenges ahead for your role and for Translators without Borders?

A: The challenge is sustaining the contribution levels. It is one thing to convince a company to help our worthy cause, but it is harder to convince them to continue. For that reason, we need to share the good work that we do, so that donors are confident that we are making good use of the money. Another challenge is to make sure that we reach as many NGOs as possible with our free translations. Finally, Translators without Borders will eventually require some professional management and this requires funds. An all-volunteer global organization is not sustainable in the long run, in my opinion.

Q: What would you say to someone who is thinking about joining a cause like Translators without Borders?

A: Much has been said about the translation industry being immature. But, for me, the fact that the industry has a charity organization is a sign of maturity. It is the right thing to give something back to the same industry that feeds you. Language is a necessity and it is also a human right – the right to communicate and the right to understand. It’s easier to support a cause that you are passionate about, in our case: languages and translation.

Q: To what extent do your professional and personal goals come together with your volunteer work?

A: They go well hand in hand; I feel passionate about the translation and interpretation industry – it’s what I do for a living – so it comes natural for me to help the organization.

Q: Could you tell us a bit about teamwork and personal relationships with other members of Translators without Borders?

A: To start with, talking to Lori [Translators without Borders founder, Lori Thicke] is a power of injection; she always has good feedback to offer to you and your tasks. She is also warm and thankful and our interactions are always very enriching. In addition to that, I work with Rebecca Petras, Ulrich Henes, Markus Meisl, Françoise Henderson and many others. And, at every new conference, I get to know new people engaged in Translators without Borders from whom I learn a lot. It’s a very enthusiastic and engaged team!

Q: What do you feel is your greatest achievement within Translators without Borders and beyond Translators without Borders so far and what is your biggest dream in life?

A: I’m very proud of having brought many corporate sponsors to Translators without Borders only by sharing my own passion for the cause. And they are equally proud of supporting us! I try to make as many personal contacts as possible, and manage to make them support Translators without Borders through annual donations, since this is one of the things Translators without Borders needs right now. And sponsors take a lot of pride in that; you can see it in conferences, when meeting in person, at their websites and with their testimonials.

Becoming a mother is my biggest personal achievement in life and therefore my biggest dream is to see my two daughters grow up and become responsible, successful and happy individuals. I also hope to be healthy enough to travel, once I retire, for pleasure and to see for myself the result of different charity activities. But I guess I’ll have to work hard for a few more years first…

Target shooting…

In paper: Any book is good for me

On the web: Twitter

Open-air activity: downhill skiing, horseback riding

With friends: cooking, wining and dining

Family gathering: Swedish mid-summer festivities

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

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.

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!

By Simon Andriesen, Board President of Kenya and CEO of MediLingua

How Translation Can Help Eliminate Information Disparities in Africa

“Access to information is a basic human right,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, according to the World Bank Institute, at a conference on the subject last year in Accra, Ghana. Information is also power, and more and more organizations are recognizing that it will play an essential role in Africa’s future. Having access to information enables people to do things like take care of their health, understand their rights, start businesses, and participate in political processes.

When it comes to information access, most of the discussions are about the delivery systems such as mobile phones, which in many parts of Africa are the computing devices of choice. Obviously, getting information into people’s hands is critical. But what good is it if they cannot understand that information once they receive it? Africa is home to more than 2,000 different languages spread across six major language families – Nigeria alone has more than 500 tongues spoken within its borders. Some of them – such as Amharic, Berber, Hausa, Igbo, Oromo, Swahili, and Yoruba – are used by tens of millions of people.

Want to End Poverty and Save Lives? Translate!

During all those years I spent “almost giving” I imagined myself serving food in a refugee camp, or teaching children in an orphanage. I never dreamed that my own métier – translation – could actually be a key to ending poverty and saving lives.

The thing is, 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…

Oh wait, aren’t those the Millennium Development Goals?

Translation is essential to meeting all eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Translators without Borders is supporting the Millennium Development goals.

Few people make this connection, but in fact, without translation how can there be global access to knowledge? And without global access to knowledge, how can the Millennium Goals be met to reduce poverty, maternal mortality, childhood deaths and AIDS? How will we ensure universal access to education, environmental sustainability, global partnership and the empowerment of women?

We believe all people deserve access to knowledge

Translators without Borders is working tirelessly to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from one language to another by creating and managing a community of NGOs who need translations and professional, vetted translators who volunteer their time to help.

Through the Translators without Borders platform powered by ProZ.com, aid groups can easily connect directly with professional translators, breaking down the barriers of language and building up the transfer of information to people in need.

We have an excellent and growing community in European languages, but we still have a huge need for translators from other parts of the world, particularly from the Middle East, India and Africa.

If you are a translator in these languages, and you are willing to donate your time and professional skills to Translators without Borders, you will directly support humanitarian projects that will give people the knowledge they need to live healthy and productive lives. To join TWB, we ask you to fill in the translator application form. We particularly need those of you who translate into Arabic or an African or Indian language.

We have many exciting projects going on right now for those languages including subtitling health videos and translating health articles from Wikipedia. Our goal is to take down the language barriers to information so that people in the developing world will have access to the same information we do. To make global knowledge local – and to make local knowledge global.

There is so much good we can do. Please join us.

Call for Translation in Kenya’s Kibera Slum

We’ve been invited to Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, to talk about – of all things – translation. “We” refers to a delegation from Translators without Borders consisting of Paula Shannon, Simon and Harriet Andriesen, and myself. Kibera is a place we never expected to find ourselves in. The second largest slum in Africa after Soweto, Kibera is home to approximately 1 million of the poorest people on the planet. Our hosts on this improbable visit are 15 commercial sex workers.

To meet them we have to park in front of the government office and follow the train tracks that squeeze between the stalls displaying plastic buckets, clothes, tin cooking pots, coal. The tracks are so close that when the train goes by on its way to Mombasa or Uganda, it grazes the shanty structures just inches away.

We are late arriving at the drop in clinic run by Family Health Options Kenya and its indomitable manager, Muthoni Gichohi. But cheerful greetings are called out to us as we climb the stairs to the second floor of a tin and wood structure.

The 15 girls – and clearly they are still girls – have been waiting for us in this hot tin room for over an hour. Modestly dressed in tee shirts and jeans, most are still active in the sex industry, but all are also what the Kenyan Ministry of Public Health calls “peer educators”. Their role is to educate other women in the Kibera slum on reproductive health: family planning, nutrition and prevention of AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). And who better to do this work?

The girls are all natural linguists. They have to be. The average African speaks 3 languages: these girls speak up to 10. Kibera is home to 14 different tribes speaking Kikuyu, Kikamba, Luo, Maasai and of course Swahili, the lingua franca. English is only a third, fourth or fifth language.

The girls are proud of their role as peer educators here, and rightly so. They are on the front lines of the worst health care tragedy in the world. The enemy is lack of information and some of the casualties include rampant HIV infections, a large number of AIDS orphans (50,000 according to UNICEF) and female circumcision affecting up to 100% of the girls in some tribes. According to the Center for Disease Control, as much as 20% of the population is HIV positive. FHOK tells us the HIV rate among their peer educators is less than 1%. Knowledge is everything. This is why Translators without Borders has been invited here today. They need our help to share their knowledge of healthy living.

In a room full of women who are not too shy to say what they think, Mildred is particularly outspoken. She tells us that most of the people they are working with understand little English, yet that is the language of over 90% of their written health materials. “When you teach a woman in her language, she is in a better position to understand,” she points out.

Lydia is the nurse in residence. Just slightly older than the girls, she too is wearing a tee shirt and jeans. She adds “If you have a limited English vocabulary, our material may not make sense. What we need are materials they can understand.” Privacy is an issue, so written translations are particularly important so that brochures may be studied at home.

Sitting by the window in a long flowered dress, one of the girls with braided hair chimes in. “They don’t understand our brochures so when they leave us they just throw them to the ground.” She illustrates this by making a throwing gesture.

The girls are used to working in the drop in center as a group, even though they come from many different tribes and represent most of Kibera’s 14 languages. So they want Translators without Borders to train them as a group so they can translate their brochures into their own mother tongues. After all, they know best how to word their messages. They shine with a sense of mission. “We need to translate our materials so we can prevent them from getting STIs to live a healthy life.” The girls are unequivocal, and more than a little persistent. “With translation, we can prevent more diseases.” And they want our help.

With the objective of translating humanitarian information into the languages people need most, Translators without Borders has been drawn to Africa. However, a dearth of translators in most local languages, even those spoken by tens of millions of people, means that to fulfill our mission we must first pass through capacity building. So here we are talking to Africans about training them to translate for their own people. The demand for our training is far greater than we had ever expected. And we never imagined that we would find requests coming from a roomful of commercial sex workers.

On the other hand, who better to educate their peers than this motivated, determined group? The Department of Health Information agrees with us, but they have no budget and must themselves fight to get the money for a singles computer. If we want to help, we have to find our own way to do so. As we prepare to leave we assure the group we will try to find the funding for some computers and a space to train them in. They ask if we can do this soon, maybe in February or March. More people are infected by the AIDS virus every day, more girls die in unsafe abortions, more children are orphaned. There is a tangible sense of urgency.

“We have many challenges,” they tell us, although this is amply clear. “So we hope you can support us.”

I Believe

I believe that for the first time in human history we are capable of sharing knowledge with everyone on this planet, regardless of where they live and what language they speak.

I believe that everything we need to bridge the knowledge divide that separates rich and poor exists today. I believe that now is the time to start dismantling the barriers to build a world where everyone can access the knowledge they need to live healthy and productive lives.

I believe we can do this, and I believe we will do this.

Lest you think I’m starry-eyed and unrealistic, let me tell you how all the pieces are falling into place. Today’s technology is giving us the means to distribute knowledge to the four corners of the world.

Did you know that already in Africa more people have access to a cell phone than have access to a pair of shoes or a toilet? A sobering statistic, but also testament to how important it is to human beings to communicate.

In Africa more people have access to a cell phone than have access to a pair of shoes or a toilet

Think of technology like cell phones, tablets and other mobile devices that are capable of connecting to the Internet. These devices can and will bring all of human knowledge into the hands of every man, woman and child. Price barriers are falling every day, internet connectivity is expanding and off-grid solutions are becoming commonplace. Most importantly, as anyone who has been to the developing world will attest, people there have the will to learn, an absolute drive to learn that may be like nothing you have ever seen before.

The will is there, and barriers are coming down. I believe we can dismantle the last and final barrier: language.

Because knowledge that is in the wrong language is just squiggles on a page or on a screen.

That is why I believe that Translators with Borders can and must take down the barrier of the language last mile. And that is why I believe the time to do this is now.

To get there we need volunteers. We need funds. We need you.

By Lori Thicke, founder of Translators without Borders

Language is essential for access to information

Reprinted from the British Medical Journal, Oct. 18, 2011

Language is key to accessing information. Speakers of a dominant language such as English—including most highly educated professionals in developing countries—may easily overlook the fact that the people who most need healthcare information are not likely to have a good understanding of English (or of French, Spanish, or Portuguese).

Language is a large obstacle to comprehension, whether training community healthcare workers with varying levels of education or delivering information to the end consumers—often people in rural communities.

Ironically, people with scant knowledge of English tend to be those who need access to information the most. In the case of Africa, with 25% of the world’s disease burden and only 2-3% of its doctors and nurses, well-informed healthcare workers are crucial. If, however, neither the people themselves nor the village healthcare workers meant to help them have strong English skills, the information they have access to will be understood imperfectly or not at all. The whole chain of access to information breaks down.