This is the story of a group of translators who one year ago were not professional translators. Last month they worked day and night translating and leading a critical project during a potentially volatile election in east Africa. Our thanks goes out to them – our team in Nairobi – and their enduring leader, Paul Warambo.
The call came in January. “Can you help us translate thousands of messages during the Kenyan elections to make sure civilians across the country are heard?” asked Heather Leson of Ushahidi. “Sure!” was my immediate response. I knew our translators were still learning, and I knew they had just been taught MemoQ by our dedicated volunteer, Marek Pawelec, but I also knew the importance of this project. And I knew we had a super leader in Nairobi who had been carefully trained and mentored by our board member in charge of Kenya, Simon Andriesen.
Our mission is to use language to transfer critical knowledge. We knew this was a very important humanitarian situation – we would figure out how to help.
The project to make sure voices were heard during the Kenyan elections was important because five years ago, in 2008, the aftermath of the election was devastating. Mistrust in the system, coupled with hate message and insinuations throughout the country stirred tribal tensions and left a very volatile situation. More than 1,000 civilians were killed in the unrest.
Ushahidi, a crowdmapping tool used throughout the world during humanitarian situations, was actually created in Nairobi during the unrest in an attempt to map the violence and help people stay safe. Five years later – with a lot of experience gathered from crises in Haiti, Indonesia, eastern United States and around the world – Ushahidi was ready to map again in Kenya, this time with the goal to make sure voices were heard and violence avoided. They partnered with a number of other organizations and created Uchaguzi – a project specifically for the Kenyan elections.
Over the month of February, Simon, Paul and the entire team met with the Uchaguzi lead, Daudi Were, and the rest of the Uchaguzi teams, for example, those doing crowdmapping. They also learned the Ushahidi tools so they would be able to translate SMS text messages, tweets, emails and other messages in real-time. Two days before the elections, they were ready – and work began.
Over the next eight days, our team worked day and night to make sure messages from ten Kenyan languages were translated in real time and made available to crowdmappers as well as teams working around the country to minimize violence. In addition to Paul, the team included:
Matthias Kathuke, Abraham Okumba, Emmanuel Kipkoech Mutai, Mary Amatu, Felix Kimani, Anne Mwangi, Rodha Moraa, Leonard Ngeno and Gilbert Karanja.
The results were staggering. Almost 39,000 messages translated from ten languages. Here are a few of the messages – a sample of the type of messages translated:
Niko katika kituo cha kuhesabia kura cha nyayo. Nimeshuhudia majaribio ya wizi wa kura za Kidero
TRANSLATION: Am in Nyayo tallying Center for Nairobi. Just saw an attempted rigging against Kidero.
Furugu town kitale, tafadhali jihadhari. Kitale si kuzuri
TRANSLATION: There is chaos in Kitale town. Please stay alert Kitale town is not safe
Kumepatikana visa vya wizi katika kituo cha kuhesabia kura Nyali constituency, Mombasa. Kwa hakika , Wakenya hatujapata mafunzo?
TRANSLATION: Cases of rigging found in Polling Station in Nyali Constituency, Mombasa. Surely Kenyans, haven’t we learnt from our past
Vijana Huruma na Mathare, Nairobi wanasema lazima watachoma maeneo hayo. Tafadhali saidia.
TRANSLATION: Youth at Huruma and Mathare, Nairobi are saying that they must burn the place. Please help
After eight days our team took a much deserved rest, comforted in the knowledge that they had made a difference. We know our team made a difference, but it was especially gratifying to hear about it from Ushahidi. When the dust settled from the election, Heather took the time to write about our team and or leader, Paul Warambo:
Our special thanks goes to Paul Warambo from TWB, Paul you are an amazing person. Many times we called you in the night and you woke up to help us handle urgent translations. I really cannot thank you enough, you were very ready to help when help was needed. If I were your boss I would have given you a prize. Pass our gratitude to Simon (your boss Paul), he played a very major role to release the whole team of Kenyan translators to participate in the uchaguzi project. Without the role played by TWB we could not be celebrating this massive success. Pass our regards to your amazing team of translators.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, especially our Fund-a-Translator donors. We cannot do this critical and impactful work without your support!!
Our Fund-a-Translator Donors:
BeatBabel
GLOBO Language Communications
ProZ.com (sponsoring three translators!)
TechniWrite ApS
Venga
The great team of donors supporting TextPartners Bicycle Ride