There is little information available on the languages crisis-affected people speak and understand. Humanitarians often develop communication strategies without reliable data on literacy, languages spoken, or preferred means of communication. The result too often is that crisis-affected people struggle to communicate with humanitarian organizations in a language they understand. Women, children, older people, and people with disabilities are often at the greatest disadvantage because they are less likely to understand international languages and lingua francas.
TWB’s Language Data Initiative addresses those issues and provides important resources for humanitarians. It supports humanitarian organizations to develop language-informed programs and communication strategies.
Click on a country on the map below to see language data, resources, and maps that we have available for that country. This map will update as new data is published in the future.
There are four components of this initiative:
1. Curate existing language datasets and format them to be easily used in humanitarian contexts. These will be hosted on the Humanitarian Data Exchange.
2. Develop tools and resources to standardize language and communication indicators in humanitarian monitoring and evaluation.
3. Conduct research and pilot innovative technology solutions to address language barriers in data collection efforts.
4. Partner with humanitarian organizations to develop targeted communication strategies that consider language and communication data.
This project is partly supported by a partnership between Translators without Borders and the Centre for Translation Studies at University College London. Funding was provided by Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Fund, managed by UCL Innovation & Enterprise.
For questions about the Language Data Initiative, please contact: [email protected]
Language data quick links:
Cambodia
Colombia
DRC
Guatemala
India
Indonesia
Malawi
Mozambique
Nepal
Nigeria
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Sierra Leone
Thailand
Ukraine
United States of America
Zambia