{"id":1936,"date":"2018-04-16T13:26:57","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.translatorswithoutborders.org\/blog\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2024-08-22T14:29:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T14:29:47","slug":"language-collective-blind-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/translatorswithoutborders.org\/blog\/language-collective-blind-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Language: Our Collective Blind Spot in the Participation Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two years ago, I embarked on an amazing journey. I started working for <\/span>Translators without Borders<\/span><\/a> (TWB). While being a first-time Executive Director poses challenges, immersing myself in the world of language and language technology has by far been the more interesting and perplexing challenge.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Students,
Students practising to write Rohingya Zuban (Hanifi script) in Kutupalong Refugee Camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Language issues in humanitarian response seem like a \u201cno-brainer\u201d to me. A lot of others in the humanitarian world feel the same way \u2013 \u201cwhy didn\u2019t I think of that before\u201d is a common refrain. Still, we sometimes struggle to convince humanitarians that if people don\u2019t understand the message, they aren\u2019t likely to follow it. When I worked in South Sudan for another organisation, in one village, I spoke English, one of our team interpreted to Dinka or Nuer, and then a local teacher translated to the local language (I don\u2019t even know what it was). I asked a question about how women save money; the response had something to do with the local school not having textbooks. It was clear that there was no communication happening. At the time, I didn\u2019t know what to do to fix it. Now I do \u2013 and it\u2019s not difficult or particularly expensive.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the interesting part. TWB works in 300 languages, most of which I\u2019d never heard of, and this is a very small percentage of the over 1,300 languages spoken in the 15 countries currently experiencing the most severe crises. There\u2019s also no reliable data on where exactly each language is spoken. I\u2019ve learned so much about language technology that my dog can almost talk about the importance of maintaining translation memories and clean parallel datasets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Communicating with conflict-affected people<\/span><\/h2>\n

The International Committee of the Red Cross and<\/strong> the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative<\/strong> have just published a <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> about communicating with conflict-affected people that mentions language issues and flags challenges with digital communications. (Yay!) Here are some highlights:<\/span><\/p>\n