Respond Crisis Translation’s Ayah Najadat: Amid surging caseload, Palestinian translators have been stepping up

May 16

On May 11, ahead of Nakba Day, Respond Crisis Translation hosted a gathering in Palo Alto, California, to highlight the work of the Palestinian and Arab interpreters and translators who are working tirelessly to support humanitarian parolees from Gaza and others impacted by the devastation in Palestine. The event included food, community, group reflections, and powerful speakers.

Below is a transcript of the speech by Ayah Najadat, Respond’s Arabic Team Lead.

Good evening everyone!  My name is Ayah Najadat. I lead the Arabic team at RCT, in addition to co-leading our training program. I am deeply honored and privileged to get to be here today with all of you in recognition of the 1948 nakba, as well as the ongoing and escalating nakba that we are seeing today as genocide and ethnic cleansing continue to escalate every day. We are here today especially to reflect together on the role of language access support in the movement for Palestinian liberation – both the role of language access support for Palestinians experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as in the international solidarity movement organising around the clock to put pressure on our governments around the world that are complicit in the last 76 years of military occupation and ethnic cleansing – and now genocide.

Before October 7th, our Arabic team already had an extremely large caseload, as we were responding to the earthquake in Syria, Turkey, and Morocco, the flood in Libya and the war in Sudan by interpreting medical, psychological, asylum, immigration and resettlement resources for survivors of these disasters.

Since October 7th, our caseload on the Arabic team has exploded. Just in the last 3 months, the Arabic team received six times as many cases for Gazans as our entire caseload in 2023. As the genocidal campaign in Gaza has escalated each day of the last 7 months, Respond’s Arabic team has been working around the clock to meet the constant evolving needs of folks on the ground, as well as to meet the constant exponentially increasing flood of casework that is coming in.

To give you a better context about the work we do:

We have done 274 emergency response projects for Palestinians since Oct 7th spanning from interpreting for people who got incarcerated due to their activism in Palestine, translation legal support, know your rights, and public advocacy materials for activists in Europe and across North America organising to demand a ceasefire and an end to the 76 year occupation of Palestine in 10 different language combinations. We are working with legal collectives who are working to build cases to prosecute governments that are complicit in the war crimes and genocide escalating in Gaza, every single day.
We have provided interpreting and translation support for 30+ individual asylum seekers and their families (each case often supports 4-8 people) people who are applying for humanitarian parole applications, as well as interpreting for urgent remote psychological and obstetric care support for Gazans stuck in Gaza.
While supporting and facilitating the work of 20 nonprofit organisations helping Gazans and Palestinians on pro-bono basis like the Immigrant Justice Project, Gaza Family Project - Arab American Civil Rights League, Immigration Justice for Palestine, European Legal Support Center, as well as 5 pro bono law firms, the Arabic team members never stopped assisting those in need despite their own financial vulnerability.
The Arabic team has welcomed +65 translators since October 7th, 32 of them are Palestinian translators, based in the West Bank, Israel and the diaspora.

Concerning the economic justice piece:

Many of our team members are themselves refugees or have gone through similar disasters around the world, and they depend on this paid language work to survive. Despite the financial constraint on our budget and that we undertook all projects on a pro-bono basis, we’ve paid our Arabic team members $32,834 out of our pocket to ensure that they earn dignified wages and can survive during the war.
One of our Gazan’s translators reached out to me requesting more assignments, emphasising that she depends on this work for her living. She also told me that she desires to work as a means of coping with the challenging psychological circumstances in Gaza, using the distraction of work to help manage trauma and navigate difficult situations.
Another similar situation, a Gazan translator contacted me to get more tasks, as she is the only member of her family who was able to flee Gaza. she was in need of a job to survive in Egypt. But given that she was stateless and she doesn’t have the right to work there, we stepped in and we helped her. While securing sustainable employment was feasible for us, sending her payment very difficult. When we intended to pay her, we requested her bank account details to transfer her the money and given the devastating situation in Gaza, she had no access to her bank account. We ended up deciding on transferring the money through WU, however, we couldn’t as she had no ID card. Fortunately, two days later, her grandpa was able to make it out of Gaza. We successfully transmitted the money to him via WU.
Similarly, one of our translators based in Turkey expressed concerns about payment methods. Despite offering various options, none were suitable for him except for bank transfer, which incurred significant deductions. To ensure that he gets the full amount of money, we arranged for someone traveling from Germany to Turkey to deliver the full payment in cash, avoiding any deductions.
Additionally, many bilingual Palestinians and Arab translators are reaching out to us seeking employment opportunities. Despite lacking formal and proper educational infrastructure in translation and interpretation. As my colleague Tati and I are co-leading the training program at Respond, we stepped in and prepared for folks many materials involving written and oral translation, illustrating how to do this job, in a proper and professional way.

These instances demonstrate not only the difficulty involved in providing fair compensation to translators operating in challenging circumstances, but it shows our commitment to economic justice and ensuring that all language practitioners enduring genocide can have family sustainable wages doing the work they are passionate about and that they help others who are in the same situation as them.

With Each document translated and interview interpreted, we are telling and retelling harrowing stories, transmitting voices that often go unheard, taking on and carrying others’ trauma, sometimes reliving our own. The incredibly high-stakes nature of this work – asylum claims and humanitarian parole applications are routinely denied based on linguistic technicalities – is work that requires extraordinary professionalism, empathy, and a trauma-informed approach. And this makes our work profoundly rewarding.

Our impact:

Our team is on alert for mistranslations in traditional and social media that are exacerbating the violence in Gaza. Since the war started we have caught many egregious and rampant mistranslations, for instance the BBC published a video clip showing a released Palestinian prisoner describing the abuse she endured inside the Israeli prisons. She said, in Arabic, that “Israel held them in the cold without electricity, sprayed us with pepper spray and left us to die.” BBC translated her testimony inaccurately to: “No one helped us. Only Hamas cared. We love them very much." And yet, Hamas was not even mentioned in the original Arabic video. Recognising this error made us step in, rectifying the mistranslation through putting out a post on X (Twitter previously) with the corrected transcript calling out this egregious mistranslation. The post got enough attention that the BBC ultimately issued a correction of the error. This experience prompted valuable discussions on combating the vicious cycle of mistranslation within media narratives.

My work as a PM at Respond is not inseparable from being a translator and interpreter myself. Couple of weeks ago, I hopped on an emergency call for several hours to interpret for a Gazan family so that they could complete their humanitarian parole application. The family was trying to get out of Gaza, they successfully managed to go through the military checkpoints and approached Egyptian border control officers. The officers informed them that while the rest of the family was permitted to cross, Mohamed which is a pseudo name, was not on the approved list. They explained that crossing approval required consent from Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian authorities. In January 2024, Mohamed's mother, wife, and children crossed the Rafah border into Egypt, leaving Mohamed in Gaza. With the onset of the war, Mohamed struggled to access medications, clean water, and regular meals. Two weeks after our interpretation between his wife and the person who was responsible for their HP application, Mohamed was added to the exit list. He subsequently crossed the border into Egypt and reunited with his family. This case is one of hundreds that we get every day.

Before I come to an end, I want to take a moment to honor the work of my team members who are mobilising around the clock to assist especially the Gazan Palestinian who never stopped supporting folks who are in need while enduring genocide and displacement. Our language practitioners rely on this work. Every donation counts and is deeply valued. Your generosity will change lives, bringing hope and meaningful change to those who need it most. Your contributions enable us to continue providing crucial language access support, ensuring our language practitioners receive dignified wages and secure employment opportunities, even in times of displacement and upheaval.

As I come to the end, I will not find a better word than “Salam” to wrap up my speech with, as it is a very heartfelt Palestinian word that embodies and means “peace.” It is a word that holds deep significance in Palestine and Gaza, where peace is desperately needed during these challenging times. Thank you, and let's extend our wishes for peace, justice and freedom to the Palestinians and Gazans who are enduring genocide. Salam to each and every one of you.