Executive Director Ariel Koren: Fighting language deprivation as a weapon of war

Language deprivation is often used to exclude and abuse, to erect walls of paper and concrete around borders, to spread lies that justify violence and genocide. Respond Crisis Translation was founded on this notion – the recognition that language rights abuses are at the center of crises and disasters, and therefore, that language access is integral to the fight for justice, safety, and dignity for all.

Respond meets its mandate to intervene in the weaponization of language in war everyday, especially in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as Executive Director Ariel Koren shared last month during a Respond event marking more than 75 years since the Nakba, or the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of the Zionist state.

Read the full transcript of her speech below.

Thank you so much to everyone for being here. It is an honor for us on the Respond Crisis Translation team to share this space with all of you and to stand here in unwavering solidarity with Palestinian resistance against the ongoing Nakba, against 76 years of Zionist settler colonial violence, and 217 days of brutal U.S.-backed Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza. 

Translators and interpreters play a critical role in times of crisis and war, but they are often erased from the conversation altogether. Today, Ayah Najadat, Director of Respond’s Arabic Team is going to share about the work of her team of Palestinian, Gazan, and Arab translators who have mobilized around-the-clock since October 7. In the past 217 days, they have translated over 1 million words —  across thousands of documents for asylum and humanitarian parole applications for people from Gaza seeking safety from Israel’s cruel genocidal bombing campaign.  

I would like to set the stage for Ayah with a bit of context about our work. 

Respond is a language justice organization of 2500+ language activists representing 180 languages – mobilizing around the clock to provide quality, trauma-informed translation and interpretation to all for whom language is a barrier to accessing essential services, safety, and dignity.

We were founded in 2020, out of necessity; the U.S. has a backlog of over 1.2 million asylum claims waiting, often for years, to be processed. The U.S. government only accepts asylum applications in English and provides no translation support or subsidies for translation. Judges regularly reject asylum claims based on language technicalities. This means the tiniest linguistic error could be the difference between life or death. As of last year, the government introduced a cruel new policy that requires asylum seekers to bring their own interpreters to their asylum interviews; this is cruel because it is nearly impossible for folks fleeing from unthinkable violence and do not have the money or networks required to find a quality interpreter.

The government also recently established a new rule that requires all asylum seekers to initiate their asylum process through a mobile application called CBP One App, which is only fully functional in English. The government has translated this app into a mere five additional languages even though hundreds of languages are spoken by asylum seekers at the border. In the Haitian Kreyol version of the app, there are full paragraphs where words are clumped together without spaces or accent marks. The translation quality is so low that it is completely impossible for native speakers to make sense of it. The government is essentially telling asylum seekers that being able to make sense of unintelligible gibberish is a requirement for accessing asylum. 

Many people refer to this series of language-based obstacles by using the term “language barriers,” but at Respond we insist that the term language barriers is too passive. Instead, we use the term language deprivation – to encapsulate that this is an active, institutionalized wielding of language to inflict violence and to make mobility and dignity impossible for people who do not speak English. 

How does the government justify the language deprivation inflicted upon millions of linguistically diverse people? The government insists that the systemic deficit of translators and interpreters at and within the borders of this country is a talent issue. But we know that there is no shortage of talented multilingual people qualified to do the life-critical work of translation. The translator deficit is not a talent issue; it is a funding issue — an issue of economic justice and wage justice whereby talented multilingual people are deprived of formal professionalization opportunities and talent-to-career pipelines.  

We are founded on this truth. By creating jobs, family-sustaining wages, and workforce development opportunities for language practitioners, we have built the capacity required to combat language rights violations and to work towards closing the systemic translator deficit. 

Since our founding in 2020, Respond has translated 11,841 asylum apps for 27,176 asylum seekers. Additionally, we have provided more than 13,348 hours of phone interpretation for people in crisis and translated critical resources that have been used by 1 million people across systems including the criminal injustice system, hospitals, clinics, housing, education, and domestic violence shelters.  Our work has created jobs and consistent income sources for 574 people. And we have done all of this on a shoestring budget. 

The final piece of context I’d like to provide about our work is that language has historically been used as a weapon in times of war. This genocide is no exception. 

We see this in the systemic, racist mistranslations of common Arabic words, including assigning terroristic intent to terms like “shaheed”  (witness/martyr), “jihad” (struggle), and “intifada” (shaking off/uprising). We see it when U.S. and European governments use these mistranslations to incarcerate, surveil, and repress Palestinians and all communities fighting for Palestinian liberation. We see it when global media use these mistranslations to perpetuate disinformation, anti-Palestinian bias, and islamophobia.

We also see it in the paper walls erected by the U.S. and European borders to keep refugees out – even while these same governments fuel the devastation from which they are fleeing to begin with. 

This is why as translator-activists, we mobilize against these language rights violations on multiple fronts – not only translating direct legal support but also translating for journalists and interpreting Know-Your-Rights sessions for organizers experiencing state repression and persecution. 

In closing, I share a quote from Amria Ahmed, an immigration lawyer with AROC, the Arab Resource and Outreach Center, who leads Project IJP, Immigration Justice for Palestinians. In Amria’s words:

“Translation is a critical component of a USCIS application. It requires a professional. In most cases, translation is a costly step that can inhibit a person's ability to submit an application. The IJP Project was formed as an emergency response to the crisis in Gaza, with the goal to provide immigration services to Palestinians with family in Gaza. The goal could not be met without translation and interpretation services provided by RCT.” 

Palestinian and Arab translators on our team who have been directly impacted by the crisis are bringing their crucial expertise to this work – and they deserve to earn a just income for this work so they can sustain their livelihood and their families. So please consider donating as generously as you can today to make this possible.