Respond’s Portuguese Team translated 56,000 words for Brazilian asylum seekers in 2023

In 2023, Respond Crisis Translation’s Portuguese Team worked on 62 cases, translated over 56,000 words, and interpreted for 61 hours. This work mostly concerned the translation of legal immigration documents.

The team also participated in a fascinating project with our partner Ashoka! 

One of our the team’s amazing linguists was an interpreter in a conference with Ashoka's Fellow Joaquim de Melo, founder of Palmas Bank, which was Brazil’s first community bank that opened 25 years ago. The conference presented the alternative currency that was created by Joaquim to build and retain community wealth in Fortaleza, a Brazilian state in the Northeast, and how they have since grown into a national movement of 150 community banks, which mobilizes and redistributes 1.5 billion reais (nearly 300 million USD) yearly in local economies. 

You can watch the full conference by accessing this link: From economic inequality to community wealth: Lessons from Brazil

From the Portuguese Team co-leads:

Vanessa:

“I started translating as a volunteer in 2020 during the pandemic, and I became a PM for the Portuguese Team last February. 

Since university, I have done several translation jobs from several different areas, but I had never worked with people at risk, who suffer or have suffered violence. It was a challenge to deal with my emotions, reading as this client was constantly physically and emotionally abused. 

The work we do is much more than translating or interpreting, we really help people to have a voice and a chance to get out of the immediate danger. Translating the documentation was very important to me, and I am very proud to be part of the RCT family!”

Dafnes:

I started working as a Project Manager last year, so one experience that struck me was when I was a volunteer linguist with my colleagues Aline Scátola and Thiago Souza, I interpreted weekly meetings between lawyers and their asylum-seeking client.

This client had suffered a lot of violence and people who didn't see him as a person. So, in addition to all the linguistic work we had to do, we had to be patient and consistent and create a safe space for the client to feel comfortable enough to tell his story, so that he wouldn't think we were just there to do an internship or something like that.

It's hard to get free service from lawyers and high-quality, empathetic interpreters in the USA. You also have to be lucky to find people who look at you as a person and are really willing to help you.

A big thank you to Respond and our volunteers who managed to do this compassionate and empathetic interpreting job on a weekly basis for 6 months, completely free of charge!

A note on language diversity in Brazil

While indigenous peoples have gone through a lot in the past 500 years – the number of languages spoken before the Portuguese arrival was estimated to be around 1,000, and for several decades Brazil's assimilation policy and the prohibition of communities to speak in their native language has silenced this amazing diversity – nowadays, there are over 270 indigenous languages and dialects in Brazil. 

Tupi and Macro-Jê are the two largest branches of indigenous languages, but there are other 19 language families and even "isolated languages", that share no similarities to others (see more here!).

In July 2023, Brazil's constitution was translated to nheengatu, an indigenous language from the Tupi branch that is widely spoken in the Amazon region, for the first time in the country's history. The translation was made by 15 bilingual indigenous people from Alto Rio Negro and Médio Tapajós. The translation is an important step towards valuing Brazil's cultural diversity and strengthening the commitment to indigenous peoples rights, including protecting and promoting their languages.