FEATURES
10 The Linguist Vol/61 No/3 2022
thelinguist.uberflip.com
Joining the crisis response helping Ukrainian refugees, Kateryna
Taran outlines the demands of language support in war-time
On the third day of the Ukrainian war, I saw on Instagram
that Respond Crisis Translation was seeking Ukrainian
volunteer translators and interpreters. I signed up and
after a couple of interviews, I was offered a lead position
for the Ukrainian team. Putting my skills to use helped
me to cope with the negative emotions related to
current events in my homeland.
I work part-time for about 20 hours a week, depending
on the number and complexity of the requests. Almost
all of the translating and interpreting work is pro bono.
When projects are paid, translators have the option of
receiving the money or donating it to enable Respond to
compensate refugee, deportee and other financially
vulnerable translators for their work on other cases.
The non-profit has been responding to urgent requests
from refugees since it was established in 2019. Online
tools allow us to mobilise translating and interpreting
services more easily, but also pose challenges, including
difficulties with assessing/screening translators from
different time zones, backgrounds and levels of
professionalism. In the past month alone, our team has
received over 700 volunteer applications from people with
a wide range of proficiency in Ukrainian and Russian.
Our services focus on providing language support for
refugees entering foreign countries but also aid in
countering misinformation in the information war. The
speed and emotional connection involved require extra
attention, proofreading and a clear head to ensure quality
is not compromised. That is why Respond's translators and
interpreters are required to go through online training
and trauma-informed interpreting sessions, conducted
by our Spanish team lead Romina Galloso Sabat.
One of the biggest challenges involves translating the
names of people, streets and cities. Some letters in the
Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet do not exist in the Latin
alphabet, or require multiple Latin letters to represent
them, while some are pronounced differently in Russian
and Ukrainian. So an individual's first and last name could
be written differently by different translators, especially if
one document is in Ukrainian and the other is in Russian.
This can cause legal issues for a Ukrainian citizen crossing
the border, for example because it looks to border patrol
as if the passport and driver's licence do not match.
We have also received translation and interpreting
requests in language pairs that we haven't previously seen
in the context of refugee support, such as Ukrainian>
RESPOND
TO CRISIS
SEEKING ASYLUM
Refugees fleeing
Ukraine at the border in
Medyka, Poland (main
image); and (above) a
mother and child take
cover in a bomb shelter
