Being the Voice of Others — Warriors You Don’t See

For some people, immigration seems easy. It is planned — they gather their things, documents, baggage, and go on a trip to establish themselves and their family in another country.

For many others, it is not easy, not planned, and most of the time sudden and uncertain. They barely have time to gather their documents and essential belongings. I know people who always carry their documents with them because they don’t know when or if they will go back home. They don’t even know if they won’t find their house burned down when they return.

And the hardest part is not knowing if they will see their family again.

They live day by day. I know this is the reality for many Haitians, but also for many people around the world.

Immigration also means separation and the uncertainty of when you will see your loved ones again. I know this for sure, as I have been separated from my family three times already, and it doesn’t get easier. I don’t get used to it. The third time was supposed to be the charm, but we still cried our hearts out. But, hey, this story isn’t about me alone, or maybe not about me at all, but about thousands of people stranded in foreign countries, trying to learn, adapt, survive, and at the same time support friends and family back home.

They start from scratch, build a life, and follow the rules. When you see them on the streets, you would never guess the weight they carry. They are warriors, even if you don’t see what they’ve been through or what they are still going through.

They learn the language, not perfectly sometimes, but well enough to get through their daily lives. People are most of the time amazed when someone speaks three or four languages and assume it was easy. But what they don’t realize is that learning multiple languages is often tied to struggle, survival, and necessity.

Again, this is not just my story. But I try, in my own way, to be the voice of others.

Across nationalities, this reality repeats itself. Haitian, Palestinian, Syrian, Ukrainian, Afghan, and many African communities — each carrying stories of displacement, loss, and rebuilding. Different places, different languages, different histories, but the same quiet fight to keep going.

They are warriors in ways that are not always seen. Not because they fight loudly, but because they keep going. Because they start over in places that do not always know their name. Because they learn to live with the absence of home, of family, of pieces of themselves. And still, they adapt. They survive. They build again, even when nothing feels like home.

Always learning, always carrying, always trying to stay connected to the people they love, even across distance, silence, and time.

At Respond Crisis Translation, this is where our work begins. We support these communities by connecting multilingual linguists, many of whom are refugees, asylum seekers, or have experienced displacement themselves, to urgent humanitarian and community needs. We help ensure that language is never a barrier to safety, access, or dignity. Through translation and interpretation, we carry not just words, but meaning, empathy, and humanity. We help people find refuge, access essential resources, and navigate systems in a new country, including asylum processes, healthcare, and legal services.

At some point, you realize translation and interpretation are not only about source and target languages or simply producing a final text in another language. It goes deeper than that, it means helping someone find a home, access vital health resources in their native language, and communicate with doctors, lawyers, and support systems.

We carry their stories with us, and we do our best to show up for them. We are proud to contribute to this work, even if we always wish we could do more.

While we feel like this, a friend of mine shared this with me: “Helping one person might not change the whole world, but it could change the world for one person.” And that made me prouder of my work, and the work of my colleagues. We create a better world for one person at a time.