Respond's Arabic team featured in THE LINGUIST
This is a transcription of the article VOICES FROM GAZA by Miranda Moore
Published in The Linguist 63/3 Autumn 2024 issue.
VOICES FROM GAZA
Miranda Moore explores the work of translators both inside and outside Gaza, and the difficulties they face
On 24 November 2023, 39 Palestinian prisoners and 14 Israeli hostages were freed in an exchange between Israel and Hamas. The BBC broadcast a clip of one of the detainees speaking in Arabic about her alleged mistreatment, yet the English captions mistakenly had her praising Hamas. Respond Crisis Translation (RCT), a non-profit providing humanitarian language services in 180 languages, were quick to issue their own translation, alerting media outlets to the error.
The BBC said the problem had occurred when the video was shortened and the wrong captions were left in. But whatever the cause of the issue, such mistakes foster mistrust in an age where faith in our media is at an all-time low - and this is only increased when audiences rely on translations to stay informed.
“When I watch the news and I see how events are being reported and analysed by people who probably have never met a Gazan in their life, they’re making sweeping declarations about a country they’re never set foot in,” says Basma Ghalayini of Comma Press. The Arabic editor and translator grew up in southern Gaza. Since 7 October, the homes of her mother and father, her primary school and her university have been destroyed, and she has lost several friends and family members. So while politicians and analysts discuss the conflict from a detached position, her thoughts are with her relatives and colleagues who are still trapped there.
Misinformation is a concern during any conflict, but in Gaza there are particular difficulties in getting accurate information out. We are used to seeing international press reporting from war zones, but this has not been possible in Gaza as routes in and out are blocked. And for Gazans reporting on the ground, the threat level is unprecedented. According to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), more journalists were killed in Gaza in the last three months of 2023 than any single country over an entire year since CPJ records began in 1992. By 26 July, at least 111 media workers had been killed in Gaza.
Arranging interviews for this article with journalists and translators inside Gaza proved impossible. As I was attempting to arrange one interview, the reporter was shot and all contact lost. “Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price - their lives - for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth.”
As politicians argue about the rights and wrongs of war, the human stories of those who are living through it are often overlooked. As if in response to this concern, the Deputy UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Muhannad Hadi, began his July briefing to the UN Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Gaza by Sharing “some voices” from his visit to Deir al Balah earlier that month.
Comma Press and Respond Crisis Translation are among the organisations trying to fill the need for grassroots testimony by translating and publishing diaries from ordinary people. “Giving voice to the voiceless is essential. Many in Gaza lack the means to share their experiences globally. Translating their words ensures their stories are heard and acknowledged,” says Gaza translator Athar Abu Samra, who fled to Egypt at the end of October and is now working with RCT. “Providing precise translations contributes to a truthful and balanced representation of events, educating and informing global audiences accurately.”
Nuances lost
Ghalayini has been working with writers in Gaza since 2022, and in October three of them started to write rolling diaries for Comma. She translates one from Arabic while the other two are delivered in English through voice notes and require careful editing to ensure the nuances aren’t lost due to the writers’ limited skills in the language.
One of the reasons misunderstandings happen, she suggests, is that such nuances can be missed by Arabic translators who are not from Gaza. “When someone is speaking to a news channel about a Palestinian context, you can’t just use any translator/interpreter - it needs to be someone who knows what they’re translating, because otherwise it just perpetuates misinformation,” she says.
There are cases where the emotional weight or severity of the original can be diminished in translation, explains Abu Samra, offering the example الدماء تملأ الشوارع (‘the streets are filled with blood’). Conflict-specific terminology can also prove difficult, she says, and phrase such as القصف العشوائي (‘indiscriminate shelling’) may need an explanation to convey the specific implications to English speakers.
“Certain words have lost their context, have lost their meaning,” adds Ghalayini. ‘Jihad’ (جهاد), for instance, has become synonymous with terrorism and suicide bombers, but actually means ‘struggle’. “It’s any kind of struggle - against yourself, against the world. So I think a translator’s job is extremely important in this context, because we need to focus on staying alive; we can’t be going into ‘he said, she said’ because someone didn’t translate the words right.”
Both Comma and RCT are doing educational work in this area, but the question is whether individual translators have a responsibility to raise awareness and correct misinterpretations. Ghalayini is unequivocal here: “100% it’s my responsibility. If It’s not then I don’t know what translators should be doing.”
“Translators might ‘disappear’ for days or weeks on end because they have no internet or are relocating”
So when faced with the word ‘jihad’, used in the sense of everyday struggles, for example, would it be best to use the word ‘struggle’ or add a gloss? “It depends on the context,” she says. “Sometimes there isn’t time to explain, but in the bigger context, I think we need to own those words, use them and reuse them in a way that makes people realise what they mean. It’s my job as a Palestinian translator to make it clear what those words mean historically and contextually.”
A heavy workload
In the three months from March to May 2024, RCT’s Arabic team received six times as many cases related to Gaza as their entire caseload for 2023. There is a huge need for translations from NGO’s, law firms, non-profits and individuals applying for humanitarian parole. The work includes legal documents, medical materials and personal documents needed for the asylum process.
Before 7 October, the team were already under pressure from crises in Libya, Sudan, Turkey, Morocco and Syria, and they expanded rapidly at the end of 2023 to meet the increased need from Gaza. There was a particular focus on hiring Gazan translators, not only for their knowledge of Gazan Arabic and culture, but also to provide them with the economic means to survive. The income Abu Samra receives from translation work enables her to support herself and her family, who she had to leave in Gaza. “This financial stability is crucial given the challenging circumstances,” she says.
In terms of the language, RCT project manager Ayah Najadat aims for “the perfect dialect match”. However, the Levantine dialect, spoken across the region, is widely understood by other Arabic speakers, particularly those from North Africa. “And when they are not able to understand something we work collaboratively,” she says.
Idioms can be a little tricker for Arabic speakers who are not from the area. “For every breath we take, there’s a Palestinian idiom,” Ghalayini laughs. “Yesterday we were dealing with the expression ‘every time the cup clinks with the pot’ [ كل ما يحك الكوز في الجرة ] , which means something that is happening often. We struggled to translate that one! Idioms are always very complicated when I’m doing translations from Gaza, but equally fun to work on.”
Under attack
For translators in Gaza, the lack of electricity and internet makes it difficult to charge devices and send translations once they’re completed. RCT sends them non-urgent cases where possible and provides e-Sims so they can connect to the internet. Nevertheless, getting a signal can involve moving to a more dangerous location. “They don’t want to be in the middle of the crowd to get connected to the internet,” explains Najadat, who leads the organisation’s Arabic team.
Translators and writers might ‘disappear’ for days or weeks on end because they have no internet or are relocating. The week before we spoke, one of the writers Najadat is working with filed a diary entry late. “She emailed to say ‘I couldn’t get back to you on time because I was relocating from Gaza City to Deir al Balah.’ We’re always dealing with these situations and from our place there's nothing we can do to make sure these people are safe - just wait.”
After the war began, translator Mona Ameen Mohamend Nofal found that she couldn’t work at all. She had previously been working with the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, but with no internet or electricity or electricity she couldn’t use her laptop, and used her phone sparingly to avoid draining the battery.
Within the first three days, she received an evacuation order from the IDF to leave her home in Beit Hanoun. “We had only five minutes to evacuate, not only the house but the entire neighbourhood,” she tells me. Her family fled first to Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City, but it was also under attack. “We moved from one place to another, but we found that danger was present everywhere we went.” They eventually made it to Egypt in April.
Managing trauma
For those, like Najadat, who are working from a place of safety, this takes a toll. As we speak, we talk in euphemisms avoiding certain words as if they are too painful to say. “I was afraid the person who was working on this piece had been… I don’t want to say something bad, but I was just afraid for that person,” she tells me.
When we speak, Ghalayini believes most of the translators and writers she has worked with closely are still alive, but with some notable exceptions, like Dr Refaat Alareer, who she got to know during her last trip home. It’s clearly painful to talk about. “I can’t think,” she says, distressed. “I can’t remember… the list is just so long.” Hearing someone mentally go through the list of the dead to make sure they haven’t forgotten anyone is heartbreaking.
Vicarious trauma is a real concern, and something RCT takes seriously. A trauma-informed session is mandatory for all their translators, though there is an understanding that those in Gaza may not be able to attend the full session. To support translators’ mental health, Najadat is careful not to give them work that might be triggering. “I try to select the right documents for the person. When I sense that they might have trauma, I try to give them something more like legal documents,” she explains.
““The real opportunity in this work is that you will not have free time to think about what happened to you””
At the same time, the work can be helpful. “Emotionally, translation has been my passion from the very beginning. Today, when I receive assignments via email, I feel happy because I know that I have also found what I love and what I belong to, especially after I lost everything in Gaza,” says Nofal. “The real opportunity in this work is that you will not have free time to think about what just happened to you and your family in Gaza. Instead you push this negative energy away.”
Najadat has heard similar sentiments from translators living in Gaza. “One emailed saying ‘I’m not feeling good - can you send me more cases? When I busy myself with work I don’t focus on hearing the bombing and that’s what’s happening around me.’ I think it’s like a coping mechanism,” she says. For Abu Samra, the situation was complicated while she was still in Gaza: “On one hand, my work kept me connected with the outside world and contributed to aid efforts for those in need. On the other hand, the threat of violence and the logistical difficulties added to the risk and stress. Balancing these aspects was demanding but necessary.”
Ghalayini, too, has found that assignments bring comfort to some of her colleagues in Gaza. “It’s heavily dependent on the person - we’re approached some writers to write diaries and for some it helps them. People want to be heard and it gives them purpose. And I think it gives them a sense of survival and humanity - they will do anything to show the world, look, we’re human, we’re here, this is us.” And this is where the work of translators is so important, revealing the human stories behind the political discourse and devastation.
