Inside our work translating for Ukrainian refugees
Respond Crisis Translation Ukrainian and Russian teams have worked tirelessly around-the-clock since the start of the war on Russia in 2022.
In this video, the head of our Ukrainian and Russian teams Tetyana Grygor'yeva shares her powerful experience leading this work:
“I am from Ukraine, and I have been a refugee twice. I had to run me and my mom from my home when Danisco, Ukraine was occupied in 2014.
With the start of a full scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in 2022, we had to run again. I know how it is not knowing if your family will be alive in the morning when you wake up. I know all Ukrainians are like me, they had to leave their homes behind, they had to leave families, mothers that lost their sons. I want to help people like me. I want to help my people, because I'm one of them, and I know how it feels.
At the beginning of the Russian full scale invasion, there were 15 million refugees from Ukraine. People were just, like, running to the border, and millions entered new countries where they don't know anything and they don't speak the language, so they don't have a means to communicate what they need.
At Respond’s Ukrainian and Russian team, we work with refugees from Ukraine and organizations that help and support refugees to get settled, to seek medical attention, education for children, and finding jobs for adults.
We translate documents for all of them, because when they arrive in a new country, the first thing that you have to do is to get registered. Basically they bring their passports, marriage certificates, their birth certificates for children to the authorities and that all has to be in the languages of those countries. So we translate all those kinds of documents for refugees.
A number of people have terminal illnesses like cancer, where they need immediate attention. So we provide translation and interpretation. Interpretation for people, visits to the doctor and translation of all kinds of medical documents, including those huge medical documents for terminal illness patients.
We have also done a lot of legal translations and we also work with organizations who provide psychological support for Ukrainians. We have a huge number of asylum cases in Russian. We have a big number of translations and interpretation for LGBTQ community asylum seekers. That also run from Russia to Mexico, United States, and Argentina.
There are a lot of international organizations and Ukrainian organizations that document war crimes in Ukraine. So, we translate those documents on the war crimes to be presented in international courts.
We also have a translator, an asylum seeker from Belarus who lived in Belarus. He lost his job and he was persecuted. He and his family had to flee Belarus, and we at Respond translated his asylum case. They moved to Poland. So he and his family, his wife, were granted asylum in Poland. So this was a successful case translated by Respond translators. Like one asylum case: we had 180 pages, and we had multiple pages of complex legal documents
It's very important that in Respond Crisis Translation, all our interpreters and translators are trauma informed, meaning we are providing them psychological counseling and support.We have 450 translators and interpreters in the Russian Language team, and 150 translators in the Ukrainian team. Most of our Ukrainian translators and interpreters are in Ukraine, or refugees from Ukraine themselves. Most of them lost their jobs because of war, and for them it's also just a source for living.
This work makes me feel complete, and it gives me purpose for my life right now. Because our common goal and our common purpose is to win, to bring our homes back, to bring our families back, to bring back our right to live and speak our language.”
We need help sustaining the ever-growing caseload of urgent work for Ukrainians!
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Press inquiries: media@respondcrisistranslation.org
