Language for a Just World — how international NGOs use language to help others

Max Morkovkin 00:06
And we will be moving to the second panel discussion that we will be having with non government organizations about language for just world how international non government organizations use language to help others.

Inge Boonen 00:24
Hello, Max.

Max Morkovkin 00:25
Hello, Inga. I thank you for joining us on time. And it's time for the second panel discussion, right?

Inge Boonen 00:33
Yes, it is. Are we already live?

Max Morkovkin 00:37
I think our panelists are joining. So let me take a few seconds to introduce you to the audience in Lebanon, VP of sales and consulting and Lindsay will be moderating the second panel discussion. So thank you, everybody, for joining us. And it's time to start right.

Inge Boonen 00:58
Excellent. Yes. Thank you, Max. And yes, welcome all of you to this panel. Discussion as Mark set. The The title is language for just worlds. How international NGOs use language to help others. And we've got Lucho Bagnulo here from Amnesty International. We've got Bible Scotto at Oxfam. We've got stellar translators without borders. And we are waiting for a fourth panelist to arrive. Who is Dr. Gaya? Let me please read this name here. Dr. Gaya am Shami Wacha. She's the head of learning and capacity development for wh OHS health emergencies programs. And I am assuming that she will join us just in a couple of minutes. So while she is hopping on board, I'm going to ask the panelists to introduce themselves. So we just do a short round of introductions. And so Lucho I'm gonna kick it off with you. Could you please tell us who you are? What your position is at Amnesty International? And also a little bit of even if people probably know this, but still, what is it that Amnesty International does?

Lucio Bagnulo 02:37
Yeah, thank you again. Hello, everyone. I'm Lucia Bagnulo. I'm Amnesty International is head of translation. And together with my team, and our extensive network of freelance translators, we successfully in do to provide high quality translations to our entire organization. So I think, as you were saying, almost everyone knows, Amnesty International. But if I had to sum it up in a few words, I would say that it was founded in 1961 by the British lawyer, Peter Benenson. And over the past 60 years, it has imposed itself as the largest international NGO, and the truly global movement of 10 million people campaigning for a world in which everyone can enjoy the fight enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards and instruments.

Inge Boonen 03:32
Thank you, Lord. So what about you, but tell us a little bit more.

Barbara Scottu 03:42
Hello, hi, everyone. Thank you. So I'm Barbara Scotto. I work for Oxfam as the senior translation coordinator. So if you don't know Oxfam, it's a international organ, NGO. It's a confederation of 20 NGOs that work together to fight to fight injustice and poverty. So my team, we are the translation team for the British affiliate for Oxfam, Great Britain. And we also work closely with the International secretariat that also has translators working in house there. So our Service was created about 10 years ago, to provide the organization with translation with high quality translation and manage centrally, the translations needs for the working languages that are French, Spanish, English and Arabic. We also we manage internally, those translation requests and we work with an external pool of freelancers for any requests that we cannot manage and how Oops. So we also on the top of project management translation, we do proofreading, we also offer guidance for colleagues on translation best practice. Let's say for anything that doesn't fall into our remit, we will give our colleagues some guidance on you know how to handle the translation request in another language. So for the local languages, for example, in countries where we do not provide a language, we can help them find the best resource.

Inge Boonen 05:31
Nice. Thank you, Barbara. And I think I will come back to those questions of how many languages you translate into and how your setup looks like. Thank you. And yes, Stella, same question for you. What do you do the web? And what is it that T WB does?

Stella Hodkin Paris 05:51
i Yeah, thank you, Anna, and hello to everybody. Today, my name is Stella. And I'm head of language services at T WB or translated to without borders. And so a little bit about the organization, which many of you may have already heard of. But we were founded in 1993, by Laurie Fick, and with the aim, really to help NGOs with their translation needs by connecting professional translators, to the NGOs, with a community based model. Fast forward, you know, 28 years or whatever, 10 years ago, we were approved as a 501 C three status, which means that we are a charitable organization based in the US. And really, even though we're called translators, without borders, I think what is maybe what not so many people know is that we today we go way beyond translation. And really, our focus is on effective communication, particularly to vulnerable populations. And so we do that by supporting NGOs and UN institutions, with language services and support, but also with our research and advocacy work and with our international programs, which are based in country or remotely in the case of the COVID 19 pandemic, responding to humanitarian crises where there is a need to communicate in local languages. And we also are focusing on language technology, the development of both datasets and also solutions for language technology for marginalized languages.

Inge Boonen 07:44
Amazing, stellar, thank you so much. And I'm gonna do a shout out to the organizers here. It seems that Dr. Gaya is a an attendee. She needs to be promoted. To the panelists. It might appear. She might look like what she is attending us wisdom house. So I don't know if you guys can help us with making that that happen. In the meantime, let's Oh, and there we are. Hello.

Dr Gaya M Gamhewage 08:25
Hi, I'm so sorry for the technical glitch.

Inge Boonen 08:29
Sure. We made it so that's most important. And as you were an attendee, I think, you know, what the question is? We are wondering, what is it that the W H O does for those people that don't have a clue? And also what is your role? World Health Organization?

Dr Gaya M Gamhewage 08:54
Thank you. Again, thank you, everybody, for having me. I'm Dr. Gag, I'm here again, I actually my job is with the World Health Organization, and I'm head of learning and capacity development for health emergencies work. So I'm not a translator. I'm not an interpreter. I'm a medical doctor. And how I'm really why I'm really pleased to join this conversation is through our learning work, our training work to help people even health emergencies like in the COVID 19 pandemic, we are translating on a massive scale, the basic guidance and the training that frontline health responders that volunteers that decision makers can use to manage the pandemic so I come from it at it from a learning point of view. And I have colleagues on the call from open who dot o RG platform. And on this platform, we've been able to be very fast as the pandemic progress actually, late January last year we offered the first course in English, but today we have nearly 5 million learner registrations on the platform. But the amazing thing is we have 44 languages. So we have material available not just in the UN languages. And as an inter governmental organization, we have six official languages. So our official documents are anyway translated into from English into French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and I'm going to get in trouble for not remembering the other one, English as the other one. But we realized, for example, those six are not enough. And we need a Portuguese because we have many countries that are low and middle income, who need material Portuguese, but the pandemic has allowed us to really increase that because there is research that comes from colleagues on this, like, on this panel, like the translators without borders, that show that people really grasp understand comprehend information when it's in their mother tongue languages. And it was, in fact, translators without borders, who introduced us to this capability, they helped us set it up. We've grown since then. And we're really committed to translating material into local language. And it's really part of giving access to health education for all.

Inge Boonen 11:19
That's fantastic. Thank you so much. And yeah, Stella, I'm gonna go back to you, and you already thoughts on it. But could you tell a little bit more about the different types of content that you translate? Because I don't know that we, if we always realize how much content there is to be translated? And and also, in, in how many different language combinations you actually translates.

Stella Hodkin Paris 11:53
Okay, yeah, so So first of all, just before answering that question, I just wanted to touch on the fact that when we say translators without borders, really, we're talking about our amazing community. And today, we have 60,000, community members who actually cover well, more than 1000s of different language pairs. So we have this amazing resource that that we can tap into, in terms of the content, because we are community, because of our mission to help the most vulnerable. And also, because we work with a community model, it's very important for us that we focus on community facing content and also content that is going to be used by humanitarian workers or health workers. So really the information that is needed to allow people to be able to help others, but also to allow people to be able to help themselves. And so that's our main focus. But in addition to that, we also do we do a lot of training content, we do a lot of communications. We also do advocacy, we do a lot of focus group, discussion, translations to get feedback from the communities and interviews with communities. So then also transcriptions. And last year, we translated in 219 language pairs.

Inge Boonen 13:25
Wow, that's an impressive number. How does that look like at Amnesty International?

Lucio Bagnulo 13:35
Yeah, I mean, the number of languages is not as impressive as the one stellar as just you know, mentioned but for an NGO like Amnesty is still impressive, we translate the into 54 languages last year, for a total of a million words, more or less and more of de I mean, many of these were actually no mainstream languages like Tagalog or Romo house and so on and so forth. In terms of content type, so we translate any type of material that international Secretariat teams, were colleagues, producers, so that can be a research report or companion material, internal governance documents of papers, media and social media content, MOOCs, toolkits, anything really anything. Sometimes we also translate a court or trial, you know, extract so documents, financial documents, so as you can imagine, the perfect translator for amnesty is a very versatile one. And someone who really, you know, needs to devote a lot of, you know, to the learning curve and doesn't, you know, give up because you really need to be, you know, ready to, you know, to approach any kind of of material? And so in general, there is no really, you know, there, there are no, virtually no limitations to on the possible target languages, as this is dictated actually by the impact and the target audience amnesty is trying to reach out to, or is trying to influence really?

Inge Boonen 15:27
That makes sense. Yeah. Thank you. So, and I think, Barbara at Oxfam, it looks a little bit differently, right?

Barbara Scottu 15:35
Yes, I mean, I can relate to what Rachel just said, in terms of content, I'll come back to that in a minute. But our language, language is new, that is a bit different. We created our policy and decided on the languages that our team would focus on based on the organization's need, and where we work, the regions we work on and where the what languages are spoken the most. So our working languages are English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. And so that's the remit of our team of the internal Oxfam, Great Britain translation team. And then also the freelancers that we work with. Outside, like I mentioned earlier, obviously, some teams do need translation in other languages, for this, we will provide guidance and help them sorts the best, you know, resource for that. That also applies to any other linguistic need, like interpretation, for example, which we do not provide in our team, but we can help our colleagues who identify the best resource. Now in terms of content, it's quite varied. makes the job extremely interesting. And we do learn a lot. We work on issues that can go from climate change, to health, health issues, like at the moment with COVID. Gender Issues, tax just says water and sanitation. So that is related to all the Oxfam does, because Oxfam works on the humanitarian issues in emergencies, conflicts, for example, but also on longer term issues with its development work. Then we also our team also help the older teams in the organization that have, you know, Oxfam run like HR, legal, or the IT team, for example, which requires another set of skills of English linguistic skills. Sorry. So yeah, the list is quite long. And the documents, you know, goes from a policy report campaign report, social media, like YouTube said, the social media content for campaign. It can be, you know, a contract HR policy elearning. It's, it's very long and interestingly,

Inge Boonen 18:09
yes, absolutely. And could you tell me a little bit more about, about how the pandemic impacted your work that you need to prioritize some type of, or some type of languages?

Barbara Scottu 18:24
Yes, so when the pandemic hits, obviously, our workload increased dramatically, suddenly, so like, for every crisis, we have to readjust it became from one day to another, our top priority. And so making sure we had to make sure that with the resources that we have within the team and with our freelancers that we could provide rapidly, you know, really fast the translations that were needed. And with the highest quality, obviously, always, you know, the, the pandemic came with a whole new terminology, which is something that takes some time to work on and to agree on, you know, with the French, for example, for me, I was because I'm a French native, so I work more on the French terminology. So we have to agree within the different French speakers, how we were we're going to translate this terminology. And, you know, we've been emergencies, we are always we have to deliver so fast that terminology is always a bit left aside, and we will come back to that on later, which, you know, always creates some inconsistencies. So, we had to work on different levels, reply, you know, respond very fast to the demand for our program, mostly for the humanitarian programs teams. And make sure that we were delivering the highest quality

Inge Boonen 20:00
Thank you, Baba. And Lucia did you have to say that you have the same challenges that needed to be addressed?

Lucio Bagnulo 20:10
More or less, I mean, my team is a networks team. So we are pretty used to working, you know, remotely and sometimes at home access. So, the, we didn't really, you know, adapt to the extent because we were used to it. Although, you know, being at home, you have to adapt somehow, you know, to, to other to, you know, people living with you or the rest. So, in terms of activities, transition activity, we saw an increase when the pandemic, you know, when there was the breakout of the pandemic, we translated a lot more, I mean, usually when, you know, when it comes to a pandemic of crisis, etc, one may think of, you know, a humanitarian humanitarian field more than human rights field. So I wanted to point out something I mean, so even when the crisis is not an innate crisis, crisis, a natural disaster or pandemic, in this case, etc, it can usually be understood also as being a human rights crisis. This is not only because people's enjoyment of human rights is adversely affected on a mass case or right to life or actual health, right to housing, for example. But also because other human rights abuses typically ensue, as the government response often is characterized by discrimination, neglect, obstruction of aid, etc, etc. So we did translate a lot of a government recommendations, or recommendations to government for this health crisis. So for this pandemic, but also amnesty, amnesty we focused on, you know, providing support to people, I mean, affected by the pandemic, in the sense, you know, to let them know what the human rights were, and how the human rights could help them. So which ones lately a lot of that as well, like MOOCs and toolkits in order to help people you know, you know, acquire this knowledge? And and then, you know, use it in the best way possible.

Inge Boonen 22:26
Yes, it really feels like education was around the virus, let's call it like, that was really, really important. So I'm gonna ask stalla, and then Dr. Gaya to elaborate a little about that.

Stella Hodkin Paris 22:43
Yes, so for translators without borders, I think last year was really, you know, we actually said that, it was also a crisis of information, or misinformation and disinformation, in the early stages as much as a health crisis. So we were kind of felt like we'd been catapulted almost into this quite an important role in needing to react very, very quickly, to respond to the misinformation. And the way to respond to misinformation, is by identifying where the information gaps are, and then being able to create the right information to address those information gaps. And then obviously, to get that information into local languages. I think one thing that I didn't mention before, but it's interesting is that in terms of the poor organizations here today, to WB we don't actually create our own content. So we are working with other organizations to to spread their content and make it accessible into other languages. So in order to respond to the pandemic, we were working very closely with other organizations such as the World Health Organization, but also the International Federation of the Red Cross. And then I think probably, I think, around 70 organizations we worked with on COVID, COVID Translations, COVID language, support, whatever that might be. And we we also during the pandemic, we were able to accelerate a couple of new ideas that we had worked on in the past, but suddenly they just became much more urgent and much more relevant within the context of the pandemic. So we a year ago, actually, it's almost exactly a year ago, when we started to do social media monitoring in Asian languages initially. So we were working on a project with 12 Asian languages. We were doing social media monitoring, and then feeding that information back to the Risk Communication and Community Engagement group working group for the Asia Pacific region, so that then they could use that information And then the other things we worked on started to compile almost immediately was the COVID-19 terminology resource that we began to work on. And then that project grew throughout has been go ongoing throughout the year. And today we have 59 languages available in that resource. And again, all that as much as possible, we try and get the content validated by the experts, whether it's the World Health Organization, International Federation of the Red Cross, because we are not the experts.

Inge Boonen 25:32
Of course, yes, that makes sense. And Doctor guy, yeah. Could you elaborate a little bit you as the head of learning who how important it was for you that content was translated in several languages.

Dr Gaya M Gamhewage 25:50
Thank you NGA. Yeah, really interesting conversation by the others. And I can see, you know, how, how it takes so many perspectives to achieve this goal of getting information to the most vulnerable. So, for us, even before the pandemic, we really focus on equity. So really alluded to, you know, the language of human rights, people have a right to help. And that cannot be fulfilled, unless they have a right to education and learning, and right to information. And people have a right to information, they also have a right to participate. And language is a barrier to participation, for decision making shaping response, emergencies are experienced at individual level, household level and community level. So if we keep emergency response forever in global languages, English, French, Spanish, and we cannot communicate with and I'm not talking about disseminating, communicate with people at community and household level, we're not going to address any pandemic. So I think this is something we have understood in emergency work. And that's why I think the COVID 19 pandemic allowed us and gave us an opportunity to act on this. So before this, we had we were translating it into the international languages, but never on this scale into local mother tongue. Right. So I think the opportunity is always there in an emergency. What we've learned with COVID, is you need to grasp opportunity, it must be based on a value system, right? It's really based on values, it's not transactional. It's not just I need to translate this for this. No, it's really based on a value system. And that human rights gives that value system. And the third is you have to have scale and scope and speed. So who is coming up with new guidance, right, every week, every two weeks, and it's also being updated all the time. And we are generating content, packaging it into learning and translating it. Now to do this on a global scale. He Newton and who runs the open who platform told me this morning, we translated with the help of some of the people here but also through volunteers, crowdsourcing from countries 7 million words into 44 languages, right. And of course, lots of people use the English lots of people use the Spanish. There is one language that I want to point out here, sign language and Indian sign language. So somebody from India from that community came to us and said, yes, you're doing other languages, what about us, and it's about addressing vulnerability, right? So we worked with them. And this pack in sign language is used by 18 million workers in the community, addressing people who have this particular disability. So you see, the power of language is much more than transactional. It's really going, you know, towards fulfilling people's rights. But it's also practical, because if the frontline worker doesn't know how to stay safe, prevent infection, then we we cannot control this. I mean, I'm looking at some of our courses, infection prevention control course, II protect course. One is in 21 languages. The second one is in 16. And if you take the introductory course to COVID, it is in 36 languages, right? So it if we're fast, and we're value based, and we can do this, and we couldn't do it just with professionals, like translators without borders, we worked with other translators, translation industry, some gave us pro bono services. But what happened was a country somebody would say, we need this in Bahasa Indonesia, we will help you, our team in the countries and we have teams in 155 countries, they validate not just the translation, but that the content quality is there. And so this is how we've been able to do it. But I must tell you, it's very fragile. We don't have systems that allow us to do this all the time going forward. So this has been a great opportunity. A great period of growth. It's sort of like the wild west at the moment. But I think it's really important to be in this webinar to look at all so that you know how we can do this in more predictable, more systematic ways, getting further and further into communities, but also listening back and translators Without Borders is doing that not just translating one way there, they really are trying to listen to what communities are saying.

Inge Boonen 30:27
Absolutely. And I have a couple of questions popping up. One is, until now, we mainly spoke about a written translation. So that we'd like to hear if we talk about equity, also, about whether you engage in spoken translations, let's say interpreting, or also sign language. And then afterwards, and depending on how much time we will have, I would also like to tackle the quality topic and see and in what way, maybe, because time set to turn around turns out to be really quick. So maybe you had to speed up a lot. So in how far that you, presumably sacrifice quality. And then if we can, we will also speak about technology. But let's first talk about being inclusive, and also providing, interpreting and possibly sign language. I believe, but I used that before that you don't offer interpreting surfaces. So our

Barbara Scottu 31:37
team, as in the translation team, or somewhere in Britain, we do not do interpreting, we do not offer interpreting services, however, we do know that the service can be required for some teams, and they, they can come to us and we will direct them towards some providers that we know we have been working with for some time. And this is not something that we manage directly, we can give some guidance and make sure that our colleagues know about the best practices. And we'll find the best resource for them.

Inge Boonen 32:11
Excellent. Thank you. Lucho. What's up? Steve, the National

Lucio Bagnulo 32:17
Yeah, I mean, just to clarify me, I work within the Language Resource Center of Amnesty International. And I oversee that translation part. And my colleague, Patricia Campbell, bonallack, oversees the She's the head of interpretation. So we do have, you know, interpretation. And they have an extensive pool of pro bono interpreters. So these are professional interpreters who donate their time and their skills to amnesty. And most of the meetings are internal, there are some external etc. So interpretation is provided and ease needed as much and is as important as translation. For amnesty. We do not provide sign language interpreting, yet maybe in the future, why not? I mean, we're all for inclusive inclusivity really, so. But for the time being, it's mainly, you know, the two core services are interpretation and translation.

Inge Boonen 33:23
Thank you. Makes sense. Stella?

Stella Hodkin Paris 33:28
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So again, typically, we don't do provide interpretation services at the moment, really, because of, you know, trying not to spread our resources too thin. However, having said that, we do train, we do train interpreters in the field. So we provide introductory training courses for humanitarian interpreters. The reason for that is that in humanitarian contexts, when the international NGOs arrive, they typically hire local bilinguals to be their interpreters. And these individuals don't necessarily have the experience or training as an interpreter. So they don't know the basic practices of interpretation. So our course is, the aim of the course is to provide a basic training so that we can make sure that the interpreters in the field are following some basic practices and we've trained over the past few years, I think, several 1000 interpreters. Then in terms of accessibility, one focus area that we have is around plain language and the importance of writing in plain language to make sure that that people can understand content. And often plain language is considered as something that's maybe only relevant for people with a low educational background. But actually that's that's just not true. There's no The reason why any of us ever need to write with with big words, we were all trained to do this for some strange reason at a university to write in an overly complicated fashion. But really what we're trying to advocate for right now is to try and keep communication as simple and effective as possible. So not oversimplifying, it just needs to be the right language to get the message across as effectively as possible. So we do a lot of both advocacy and practical work around that. And then finally, the other area where we have been increasing the work that we do is around voice and audio. So in the context where we work, we northeast Nigeria, which is a low literacy context, we developed a tool called Cata. Speak so that we can deliver audio translations together with the text translations. And again, this isn't something we wouldn't have necessarily asked for. But based on our research, we realized that there was no point as getting these written translations out into the community if nobody could understand them. So we started to record our standard, the translate the written translations that we do, and we just deliver them as a simple mp4, audio recording. And then they can be broadcast around the around the camps. And we also do a lot of radio work in northeast Nigeria. Likewise, in Bangladesh, Rohingya, which is an oral language, so we have had to adapt standard translation processes to account for that. And also, we're trying to develop voice technology. So gathering voice data, again, for marginalized languages, we can't compete with the your Alexa in English. But we are trying to develop real real world solutions, very simple voice based technology that can be used in the field.

Inge Boonen 36:57
That's fantastic. And when you talked about plain language, for me, that was a great segue back to talking about quality of the translation process. And I was wondering that you get rid maybe of some steps and the process just to be able to deliver or die, while at the same time you've been saying that terminology has to be correct. And content has to be validated by institutions, like for instance, the who, in your case law, can you can you tell us a little bit about what is your definition of quality in the end? Right. Dr. Gaya

Stella Hodkin Paris 37:45
so quality? That's a fun topic, right? Because, I mean, I see the the question was, particularly in the context of volunteer translators, but we also need to consider that many of our volunteers are actually professional translators, senior translators. So the way that we manage this is that we have, it's a managed community that we have, we have different levels within the community. And so we will always have a more senior translator who's revising the work of a more junior translator. Within within the COVID. context, it was also a question of turnaround times for us. So we did work with some partners who were you know, concerned about both quality and turnaround times with the community model. And what we have increasingly been doing is we already have around 20 language leads internally. So for all the key languages that we work with, we have an an in house language lead, who is providing quality assurance and supporting the community for those languages. And then so they will will always be involved in the quality assurance process for those languages, then for other languages, we have been working with external paid language leads, and so that we have this hybrid model. So we're doing community translation, and then we're having a professional review, as well. And then for other languages, we are relying on our own quality processes for the community translation. So again, we work with with volunteers, but with the different levels and then the quality assurance processes that we have, you know, checking against the terminology. Then those are the processes we currently have.

Inge Boonen 39:31
Thank you, Stella, how does it look like at Oxfam Pamela, and that you skip some quality

Barbara Scottu 39:39
checks. So quality for us is extremely important. We it is not something that you know what you want to compromise on? You know, the team was created 10 years ago when some research was done within the organization, and we realized is that, you know, the need for translation was huge Oxfam isn't it, it's a international NGO that was creating, you know, after the Second World War, it's, it's big, and it has a long history. So you can imagine the need for languages. And we realized that, you know, there were huge issues in terms of, of quality levels, you know, could be something really good or something really bad, that the practices were also very varied the staff, you know, lacking time and resources to deal with translation would translate themselves, use Google Translate, without too much checking behind. So that, you know, we came into the organization work, the team was created to bring that professional knowledge in, we are all trained translators, we will have, you know, we will have that background. And we also we, we created the, the strategy, the we created guidelines, we hired a professional pool of translators. And so slowly, we saw the quality improving with all these, we, you know, working with professionals, making sure proofreading was done and working on terminology ahead, as much as we can, because again, terminology is probably one of our biggest issues, because of the lack of time and resources. So we try to do that, you know, as well as responding fast to our colleagues needs. So yes, translated qualities is extremely important. For obvious reasons, you know, the communication, the external communication, we have to communicate effectively, and provide the best quality for Oxfam's work on campaign on, you know, on policy work research. Also, the communication has to be clear for the people that we work with. So, yes, we, we make sure that we deliver the highest quality. We, we also use some too, you know, we use the cap tools, also for consistency, and making sure that we are all aligned on the same terminology. And we, for example, if we update HR policy, we will use the capsules to make sure it's consistent what we've done before. We also work a lot with experts. As I mentioned before, the topics that we work on are so varied. We ask our colleagues in the you know, in the field to help us check the terminology or check what we've done, you know, we will talk to colleagues, our engineers in water and sanitation. Sundar specializes in tax. So we have this very rich, you know, organization in terms of knowledge that, for us, the translation is, really, it's a great resource. So we work with them closely to make sure that we deliver the best for them.

Inge Boonen 43:11
Thank you. So it's a combination of professional translators, good terminology, manage collaboration, youth, collaboration, the use of technology, and also experts in the fields. So Luzzatto at Amnesty International, I'm sure quality is important as well. But what is your definition of quality? At the start the band, also the content type and the impact that that specific piece of content needs to make?

Lucio Bagnulo 43:43
I mean, to ask, and to me quality, it doesn't I mean, it's not just that post translation process, but it starts at the very beginning with the recruitment, or of the translators, as I was saying, I mean, we work with professional translators, mainly, I mean, the International Secretariat of the Language Resource Center, because then we have sections, like affiliates for Oxfam, and sometimes they do, you know, look, look out for their, their translators, etc, but for us, so it starts with a very tight and very strict recruitment. Sometimes, I mean, of course, with the most strategic languages, it's kind of easier, like you know, Spanish, French, etc, because there is a culture of, you know, professionalization in your universities, etc. But when we have to translate into a Romo, for example, that's another story. And it's a fascinating story, because we have to, of course, not only, you know, find a person who understands English or the source language, and understands the world and we have also to consider that many of the Human Rights terminology and words and terms are non existent or sometimes You know, when it comes to a right to, you know, sexuality or etc, those are taboo words. And that's quite challenging so many, many times, it's not a translation, but it's a rephrasing, etc. But we have to be careful at the same time because because there is a reputational risk for amnesty, you know, there is a risk for the also for the rights holders, if something is not, you know, translated appropriately, accurately. So what we do in those cases is to partner with either with our own colleagues in regional offices, or with partner organizations in the field and the ground on the ground. Or sometimes, we try to reach out to some university if they have, for example, a course on language language course, not just translation, but it can be depending on on where, you know, on what language we're talking about, it could be maybe linguistics, and not just you know, translation because translation, it doesn't really exist as a as a topic. So, we try to basically, partner with with others, and to little by little to actually identify this potential collaborators translators, maybe not, they're not professional translators, but we try to accompany them in what could be called as a learning curve, in order to become our trustworthy human voice translator. So it's a very long journey. That's why we're saying, we have to, you know, translators have to be patient, because we, we give a lot. But we also ask a lot. So we try to balance this out, to give the best conditions ever, or to abide by, you know, many international translation, you know, association. You know, the rules. So we try to really, to put their our best to do our best to make them feel part of the family, so that they stay with us. And actually, you know what, I mean, I'm very happy because we have been working with some translators for over 20 years, and even before I of course, started to Thomistic.

Inge Boonen 47:27
Wow, that's, that's great. And so Dr. Gaya, what are the quality expectations that the who and before you call them falls to translations that you realize how complex the translation process can be?

Dr Gaya M Gamhewage 47:45
It has been a steep learning curve, I totally agree. So quality, what does it mean, I agree with all the speakers about translations and the quality that we do for our normative work. So we have very professional translators, we have interpreters, because that's in the United Nations, you cannot function without that. And it was already difficult to agree on six languages that suits the whole world. And we also, you know, we go through quality when we in that kind of high level translation quality, for normative work. But I want to challenge us here because during a pandemic, you have to balance that precision and accuracy with speed. So if you take too long to get information to the field, your outbreak is out of control, people have died. The objective here is to save lives, protect the vulnerable and stop or slow the transmission. That's the objective. So as a public health person, I come with that objective. Now then we see how can translations help us. The other balance that we have to go is the language and communication. So what is enough, fast enough that could help save lives protect the vulnerable and stop transmission? So that's a question I have to answer from a programmatic point of view. So even translation of our learning materials and others into the official languages where we have professional translators, it's too slow. We've had to go outside even for that, how do we manage quality, we go to the countries which have requested those languages and asked them to double check both the content because quality for me has to have content and the language together. So that is best done as close as possible to the field, not not where I am. So my team he knew to learn and others they have I don't know how they do it. It seems like artificial intelligence but it isn't it's her human intelligence that allows this to be done. You will find my team members actually formatting courses in languages they do not understand. Right. So it It's really been very hard, the quality also has to be linked to how people understand. So the culture, we have to take in into account behavioral science, right? Neuroscience, adult learning, right? The impact of color, impact of font impacted images, all of this has to come in. Because ultimately, we want to communicate and engage, not translate. Translation is a tool, right? Language is a tool. So my job is to keep pushing, and make sure we communicate, but also increasingly listen to what people are saying. We ask everybody to wash their hands. 40% of the world's population do not have access to what a safe water and soap. So this is a real rubbish recommendation, I'm sorry, absolutely rubbish. And then we have new terms that only epidemiologist knew. But now we have communities talking about flattening the curve, Epi curve, we started saying social distancing. And then we realize that it's wrong. It's physical distancing, right. So this is a ship, we are sailing as we're building it. So that is why I have to take decisions and colleagues have to take decisions on how much we balance accuracy, with impact, right with communication. So I, during an emergency, we have different criteria. Of course, the perfect world is you have perfect accuracy, great translations that are contextualized. And they come really fast, right? But we're not there yet. So we're having to take decisions all the time. Also, just about the different services we give me. So interpretation is very important, not just for our meetings, when we go to investigate a disease outbreak in a community, we do rely on local interpreters. And as Stella said, you know, the training they do and others do for this really increases the impact of what we're able to do. And particularly when you're investigating something when people are suspicious, and they don't trust you. So that's that sign language I've already talked about, this has been really one of the most touching, emotional things that have accidentally happened, really, I really didn't think about it, it accidentally happened. But it I feel very proud. All of our learning materials, we're thinking about visual access, you know, so there are guidelines to help people as much as possible, you know, to to access it, we produce a lot of audio. And particularly if you take Africa, they really prefer audio files to, to the written. And also just to say, I mean, we have, for example, in Africa, we have 10 material in 10 local languages. But I'm afraid there is a challenge there. Because maybe people don't know about it, the uptake is not as much as I had hoped it would be. So we also have a challenge, we may have translated great material, but people may not know about it, or they don't feel comfortable with it, and they're not accessing it as much as they are in the internationally established languages. So that's a long way to say I want to say that quality is great. But the ultimate quality is about saving lives.

Max Morkovkin 53:16
I deeply I could not allow myself to interrupt you earlier. But I have to. I also have a very small mission to save the time. So it's time for us to wrap up, unfortunately,

Inge Boonen 53:29
yes. There was a there were a lot of questions by people asking how can we contribute, I believe marks that you are gonna pull up the websites of the different organizations that are here, unless I'm mistaken.

Max Morkovkin 53:50
This is something to ask my colleagues, but I'm sure that we will organize something.

Inge Boonen 53:55
Yes. We can definitely organize something. I believe that we can also answer these questions maybe separately by sending an

Max Morkovkin 54:05
email. Just know that yes, yes, we can do it. So.

Inge Boonen 54:10
Okay, great. And so yeah, to all the attendees here, sorry. We really wanted to give you the chance to ask some questions, but at the same time, these panelists had so much great insights to share that I wanted to give them the opportunity to speak as much as possible. So I guess we have to wrap it up here bucks.

Max Morkovkin 54:36
Yes, just appreciate the panelists and in Thank you very much for moderating this panel discussion. It was really great having you with us today and we hope that you will stay tuned and keep keep listening and watching because we we have many speakers coming soon.

Lucio Bagnulo 55:00
Thank you everyone.

Max Morkovkin 55:02
Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate great mission everybody of you have so

Lucio Bagnulo 55:08
thanks for your thank you

Max Morkovkin 55:12
with all your endeavors Yep. Thank you very much