Intergenerational Team Translates Climate Change Glossaries into 40 Languages

The fires spreading across California are a poignant reminder of the urgency with which we must stand up to address climate change. At Respond, we recognize that environmental justice and language justice are intertwined, and that our climate activism is only as effective as it is linguistically accessible.  

Recently, Respond Crisis Translation volunteers teamed up with Climate Cardinals to help make essential climate resources accessible to linguistically diverse populations.  Professional translators from the Respond team proofread translations of the Condé Naste Climate Emergency Glossary, which had been translated into 40 languages by high school student volunteers from the youth organization Climate Cardinals. The climate glossary, composed of over 5000 words, has now been successfully proofread, translated, and edited in conjunction with these passionate students by 15 of Respond’s language teams, including Slovak, Punjabi, Hindi, Tigrinya, and Bahasa. The translations are anticipated to help 300,000 people across the globe to better understand climate issues. 

Climate Cardinals, founded by your not-so-average high school student Sophia Kianni, is a youth-run organization focused on making the climate movement more accessible to non-English speakers. Sophia’s inspiration was born in middle school, when she was awestruck by the visible air pollution while visiting her family in Iran. She became eager to have constructive conversations with her Iranian relatives about climate change, but she noticed that they were unfamiliar with these terms because of a lack of information present in Farsi. While quarantined at the start of the global pandemic, she had the chance to organize other high school students interested in translating climate resources. A viral TikTok about Climate Cardinals garnered an influx of young motivated volunteers practically overnight. 

During the next few months, the youth language activists at Climate Cardinals will be working on translating shorter documents of climate-related information into various languages in partnership with our translators at Respond. We could not be more excited to continue to support this undertaking for language and environmental justice!  Thank you to the youth translators and adult translators alike who are teaming up to make this intergenerational, essential collaboration possible.

Photo of a house in fire during the California wildfires 2020, (Credit pending)