Changing the world through language
Listen to Translator without Borders Executive Director, Aimee Ansari talk about changing the world through language at TedxYouth@Bath in November 2016.
Tag: guinea
12 reasons to celebrate TWB in 2016!
celebrate twb
In 2016 we worked with some wonderful partners to change people’s lives through access to vital information in the right language. We believe that no person should suffer because they cannot access or understand the information that they need.
So lets celebrate TWB with a recap of our year:
January
In JANUARY we were providing translations in six languages to humanitarian aid agencies responding to the European refugee crisis.
FEbruary
In FEBRUARY we worked with the American Red Cross to translate their First Aid and Hazard Universal apps. These apps help enhance individual disaster preparedness and response to emergencies.
march
In MARCH we announced the winners of our third Access to Knowledge Awards, in acknowledgement of their outstanding support.
april
In APRIL we partnered with Global Health Media Project, to bring multilingual health care instruction to practitioners of health through video.
may
In MAY we attended the World Humanitarian Summit where we advocated for the inclusion of language in humanitarian response.
june
In JUNE we made an impact with a new video on how Translators without Borders responds to crisis by working with non-profit partners globally.
july
In JULY we translated the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability into Swahili for partner CHS Alliance.
august
By AUGUST we had trained over 480 interpreters and translators and we had created the world’s first-ever humanitarian interpreter roster.
september
In SEPTEMBER we trained 15 Guinean translators so that communities in West Africa can access more health care information in their language.
october
In OCTOBER following Hurricane Matthew in Haiti, we translated cholera prevention messages into Haitian Creole, for affected communities.
november
In NOVEMBER we developed the world’s first crisis-specific machine translation engine for Kurdish languages using content from our Words of Relief response in Greece.
december
In DECEMBER we reached 10 million words translated in one year, something we would not have been able to do without the help of our volunteers and
supporters!
We’ve had some great successes this year but there is still more work to be done! This holiday season, consider a donation to support the work of TWB.
“I want to ask myself, why are people dying every day?”
translation saves lives
A speaker of 5 languages, Jeanne Martin Goumou from Guinea, recognized the importance of giving people access to information in the right language during the Ebola crisis. In a country of almost 12 million people where more than 40 languages are spoken daily, Ebola prevention messages in French and English were not understood by the majority of the Guinean population. Making good use of her fluency in 3 local languages, Jeanne Martin decided to help by manning the lines of the free National Ebola Hotline, helping those across the country who were desperately seeking vital information in a language they
could understand. Because she knows that translation saves lives.
During my interview with Jeanne Martin, she told me about Guinea and the times of Ebola. “
“I want to ask myself, why are people dying every day?”
She spoke of a country with a high maternal mortality rate, and where malaria is one of the biggest killers of children. She spoke of a country where information arrives in European languages that the majority of the population doesn’t understand.
Jeanne Martin is one of the 12 recent graduates of the Translators without Borders’ translator training course in Guinea, a project in collaboration with eHealth Africa that aims to build language capacity in countries where there are few to no translators. She feels passionate about the training, and for her, the course was a professional opportunity to grow as a translator and to learn new information on important medical topics.
Challenges
One of the biggest linguistic challenges she encountered during the training is emblematic of the importance of the very work she is doing. She says there are a great amount of “false friends” in the documents she translates; words that look or sound very similar in two languages but that have very different meanings. This is just an example, in the everyday life of a translator, that shows why information in the right language is so important – so that information is clear and there are no misinterpretations when vital health care instructions are given in a foreign language.
Looking to the future, Jeanne Martin wishes to continue to help people in Guinea access health care information in a language and format they can understand.
By Caterina Marcellini, Translators without Borders Communications Officer