Several asylum and legal victories for speakers of marginalized languages made possible by Respond’s translators in 2024

Jul 23

Valentina Callari Lewis leads our Indigenous and marginalized languages team, a vast network of language practitioners working in more than 160 languages. Valentina’s teams have both experienced themselves and provided support in crisis situations around the world that haven’t even made it into the headlines, or if they did, were mere blips on the worlds’ radar – like the ongoing violence and instability in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, instability in Mauritania, flooding in Bangladesh, the list goes on. Valentina’s teams have supported more than 2,500 cases for more than 441,000 people.

Here is an update from Valentina:

This year we have continued advocating for language access, while also focusing on creating talent-to-career pipelines. As we work to pair speakers of a less frequent, historically marginalized or otherwise rare language, we again affirm how critical translation and interpretation become for people who want to access medical systems, institutions or resources. It is often the case that these systems and institutions are –deliberately– not designed to support those languages, and it is here where you, translators and interpreters, have a critical role in ensuring that these people can make use of those services in their languages.

Not only do you make our clients’ experiences better, but you actually give them the chance to use those services and resources.

In 2024, we have worked on 564 cases so far; 299 of these cases are related to asylum.

We have translated 752 pages, interpreted for 472 hours, and translated 300,698 words!

We have taken 37 cases for individuals, and we have worked on 258 projects of informational resources to support speakers of marginalized languages in accessing critical services!

Stories of success & language justice

We have continued to support our clients, and we have received some amazing stories of success thanks to your support!

Over the course of the last months, one of our amazing interpreters helped a client prepare for his asylum hearing. Last April, we got the news that the client, Mr B., had been granted asylum! Interpretation played a crucial role for the client to answer the questions asked by his attorney and cross-counsel assertively and confidently. You can read more about this case here
Another client who was assisted by the same interpreter, Musa, also got asylum!
E, a client of ours who speaks Twi, got asylum after receiving support from one of our amazing Twi interpreters, Portia.

Enabling access to information

Translation and Interpretation are not only vital in the immigration process, but also enable people to access crucial information!

We have provided support in Mixteco to farmworkers in pregnancy and postpartum. By providing interpretation, they were able to have access to information, which empowers farmworkers to access the paid leave they need to avoid exposure to agricultural toxins during pregnancy and the postpartum period.
We have provided interpretation in Vietnamese during a meeting and investigatory interview for an investigation involving allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.
Two of our Bahasa Indonesia interpreters work at an event for Refugees International between displaced communities and members of the Loss and Damage Fund Board
We have translated flyers into Khmer, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Hmong and Lao for fast food workers in California. These flyers contain information about their rights in the workplace concerning paid sick leave, the minimum wage increase, and COVID in the workplace.

Please note that these are only a few of the many, many cases we have worked on. I am so grateful to each single one of you who has taken an assignment this year so far. If you haven’t had the chance to work with us yet, please rest assured that there will be more interpretation and translation opportunities!

Thank you!

We are at a crucial moment, in which many people are suffering from language rights deprivation, and it is here when our role as language activists needs to be visibilized so that we can continue helping people!

You and our PMs are what makes Respond Crisis Translation unique, and we could not do this work without you! I am so inspired by your commitment to our mission. Thank you for being part of our multilingual community and for putting your skills at the service of others!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you! I feel so lucky to be part of this community, and I hope you feel the same way too!

I hope you’re all safe and well out there!