@CIOL_Linguists
AUTUMN 2024 The Linguist 11
FEATURES
On 24 November 2023, 39 Palestinian
prisoners and 14 Israeli hostages were freed
in an exchange between Israel and Hamas.
The BBC broadcast a clip of one of the
detainees speaking in Arabic about her
alleged mistreatment, yet the English captions
mistakenly had her praising Hamas. Respond
Crisis Translation (RCT), a non-profit providing
humanitarian language services in 180
languages, were quick to issue their own
translation, alerting media outlets to the error.
The BBC said the problem had occurred
when the video was shortened and the wrong
captions were left in. But whatever the cause
of the issue, such mistakes foster mistrust in
an age where faith in our media is at an all-
time low – and this is only increased when
audiences rely on translations to stay informed.
"When I watch the news and I see how
events are being reported and analysed by
people who probably have never met a
Gazan in their life, they're making sweeping
declarations about a country they've never
set foot in," says Basma Ghalayini of Comma
Press. The Arabic editor and translator grew
up in southern Gaza. Since 7 October, the
homes of her mother and father, her primary
school and her university have been
destroyed, and she has lost several friends
and family members. So while politicians and
analysts discuss the conflict from a detached
position, her thoughts are with her relatives
and colleagues who are still trapped there.
Misinformation is a concern during any
conflict, but in Gaza there are particular
difficulties in getting accurate information
out. We are used to seeing international
press reporting from war zones, but this has
not been possible in Gaza as routes in and
out are blocked. And for Gazans reporting on
the ground, the threat level is unprecedented.
According to the Committee for the
Protection of Journalists (CPJ), more
journalists were killed in Gaza in the last three
months of 2023 than in any single country
over an entire year since CPJ records began
in 1992. By 26 July, at least 111 media
workers had been killed in Gaza.
Arranging interviews for this article with
journalists and translators inside Gaza proved
impossible. As I was attempting to arrange
one interview, the reporter was shot and all
contact lost. "Since the war in Gaza started,
journalists have been paying the highest price
– their lives – for their reporting. Without
protection, equipment, international presence,
communications, or food and water, they are
still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world
the truth," said CPJ Program Director Carlos
Martinez de la Serna. "Every time a journalist
is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to
exile, we lose fragments of the truth."
As politicians argue about the rights and
wrongs of war, the human stories of those who
are living through it are often overlooked.
As if in response to this concern, the Deputy
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East
Peace Process, Muhannad Hadi, began
Miranda Moore explores the work of translators, both
inside and outside Gaza, and the difficulties they face
Voices from Gaza
DANGER ZONE
Palestinians search a house after an air
strike on Rafah, southern Gaza, in October
©
ANAS-MOHAMMED
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SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
