The Russian and Arabic Teams Coordinate to Help Students from Gaza
By Machaela Parkin and Mohamed Fenzari
Over the last two months, the Russian and Arabic teams have coordinated to provide translation support to several students from Gaza, translating documents from Arabic to English and then from English into Russian with the help of over a dozen of our talented linguists. Many of the students have sought scholarship opportunities in Russian-speaking countries during the ongoing genocide in Gaza and have come from universities that have since been destroyed. Several of the students have been in Medical and STEM fields and have been forced to restart their educational careers elsewhere as a result of the genocide.
Most of the Gazan students have come to us with short deadlines for their translations, requiring our teams to translate their documents from Arabic into Russian in the matter of two or three days. We have been working around the clock to make sure that they are able to meet the deadlines for their scholarship applications. This has involved close collaboration between the Arabic and Eastern European and Central Asian Languages teams to make sure that everything is done on time and delivered to the requester in the language they prefer to use.
“As the Arabic Project Manager, I would like to acknowledge the incredible dedication and skill of the Russian team in handling these urgent requests. Many of the documents we received from Gaza were in Arabic and required translation first from Arabic into English, then from English into Russian. The Russian team collaborated closely with the Arabic team and the former did an incredible job, ensuring that these translations were completed accurately and on time, despite the immense pressure.” said Mohamed Fenzari, Arabic team project manager.
He added that “working on these projects has been both challenging and deeply rewarding. It is an honor to contribute to efforts that open doors for students whose lives have been profoundly disrupted by the ongoing crisis. This experience has reaffirmed our collective commitment to breaking down language barriers and providing critical support to those in need.”
In addition to Arabic to Russian, the Arabic team and the Eastern European and Central Asian Languages team have also been collaborating on additional projects, including a combined Arabic and Slovak request involving 15 pages of medical documents from Slovak to English and another 20 pages from Arabic into English for an asylum seeker.
This is just one example of how we collaborate on different language teams to meet the diverse language access needs of refugees and asylum seekers. Often we do not know what kinds of language combos we will face, which is why we constantly have to work together to make sure the gaps in language access are filled. Our cross-team collaboration is one of the many things that make Respond unique in the way that we are able to meet people where they are and make sure that we are responding to any kind of need that comes our way.
