Respond Blog
The role of anti-Kurdish language violence in the devastation of the 2023 earthquake
By Raman Salah
One effect of linguicide – the calculated destruction of a language – is that during times of disaster and emergency, government response and relief measures like critical information and outreach are not accessible in a language that many of the people most affected by the crisis can understand.
Anti-Kurdish language violence in schools
By Raman Salah
While language violence occurs in many contexts, from disaster relief and humanitarian aid to legal, medical, and psychological support, one of the most insidious and intergenerationally significant sites of institutional language violence is the school system.
Respond in Al Jazeera: Intervention leads BBC News to correct egregious mistranslation
On Saturday, November 25, a clip posted by BBC News showed a released Palestinian prisoner describing horrific abuses inside an Israeli prison. She said, in Arabic, that Israel held them in the cold without electricity, "sprayed us with pepper spray" and “left us to die." …
Respond's Arabic team combats language violence against Palestinians
At Respond Crisis Translation we witness that language access is central to the struggle against violence everywhere.
Our team is working tirelessly to address language violence and language gaps that are fueling the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. One of many examples is the systemic mistranslation of common Arabic words that…
Mistranslating the movement: Language is being weaponized to malign the Palestinian liberation movement and justify an ongoing genocide.
Arabic words are regularly mistranslated or misconstrued in English-language media to stereotype and demonize Palestinians, painting them as terrorists and contributing to racist narratives that pro-Palestinian activism is inherently violent or antisemitic.