By Yula Rocha, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2020
Migrants and asylum seekers arriving in the United States today face a long and treacherous process. They must navigate not only the current administration’s policies but also the barrier of language.
“We talk about Trump’s wall, but honestly there are already word walls and paper walls in place, so the idea of a wall is redundant,” says Ariel Koren, the founder of Respond Crisis Translation.
Respond was created in October 2019 by a collective of professional translators and interpreters devoted to what they call “language justice.” In partnership with migrants’ grassroots organizations and nonprofits such as RAICES and Al Otro Lado, they offer pro bono translation of legal documents and testimonies and interpretation services for clients in detention centers in the United States and Mexico. By May 2020, they translated 8,500 pages of documents and served 875 clients.
Comments (0)