Language interpretation is an essential component link between refugee and organizations providing legal and other types of assistance. Miscommunication can have devastating outcomes, from incorrect decisions in refugee status determination to misdiagnoses in health care treatments. Interpreters require training, language resources, and support to perform their task professionally, and to avoid unintended harm from misinterpretation or breaches of ethical boundaries in confidentiality and neutrality.
NAATI
https://www.naati.com.au/online/
NAATI (National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters) is an online directory that links Translators and Interpreters with those looking to use their services.
UK Language Solutions
http://www.uklanguagesolutions.co.uk/index.aspx
UK Language Solutions provides 24 hour-a-day access to translators and interpreters in over 200 languages.
American Language Services
American Language Services provides worldwide translation and interpreting in over 240 languages.
Cairo Community Interpreter Project (CCIP)
http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/cmrs/ccip/Pages/default.aspx
Resource information on interpretation for refugee aid settings can be found on the CCIP website, which is an interpreter training and technical assistance outreach project of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
Contacts: Amany Ahmed, CCIP Language Resources Coordinator, Mariam Hashim, CCIP Training Coordinator, Alice Johnson, CCIP Director
Email: ccip [dot] auc
gmail [dot] com and ccipaucegypt [dot] edu
Cairo Community Interpreter Project (CCIP) has been promoting the training of cultural interpreters as well as their professionalization through accreditation where it developed and consolidated a course whose training modules focus on principles of consecutive interpreting, basic of linguistics and sociolinguistics, and professional ethics. Operating since 2002, CCIP offers:
- 100-hour Full Course Community Interpreter Training for Refugee Aid Settings for interpreters working in Arabic, Amharic, Fur, Somali, and Tigrinya languages.
- 40-hour Short Course on Community Interpreter Training in Refugee Aid Settings, non language specific, designed for refugee interpreters outside of Egypt.
- Special topic 1- to 3-day workshops on community interpreting in refugee and migration settings.
- Refugee terminology glossaries in Arabic, Amharic Fur, Somali, and Tigrinya languages.
- Technical assistance in interpretation planning and coordination for organizations that rely on interpreters in their services and activities.
Daniele Calvani
Email: dcalvanixsmail [dot] com
Daniele Calvani is available for consultancies in the field of socio-linguistics, community interpreters training, translation, and coordination between human right lawyers, psychosocial counsellors, and interpreters. He founded/directed the Cairo Community Interpreters Project at the American University in Cairo in 2002-2006. He has extensive expertise on the Middle East as well as knowledge of English, Arabic, German, Spanish, and Italian. In June 2006, Calvani received the Service and Innovation Award for his outstanding services to AUC. He subsequently initiated and developed projects similar to CCIP at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul), Makerere University (Kampala), and the International Criminal Court (The Hague) among others. He is also responsible for writing the UNHCR handbook Interpreting in a Refugee Context, 1 January 2009, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/49b6314d2.html
Language & Asylum Research Group (to be completed)
http://www.essex.ac.uk/larg/Default.aspx
The Language & Asylum Research Group (LARG) has its organisational base at the University of Essex, Colchester, Essex UK, in the Department of Language and Linguistics and the Human Rights Centre. LARG is a group of experts who share an interest in LADO (Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin) as a research topic, from a practitioner's point of view, or both. Day-to-day management of LARG activities lies with the Convenors.
The primary mission of LARG is to stimulate research, contribute to the further development of guidelines, and promote best-practice for practitioners working in the field of LADO, through exchange of informed views, in the spirit of and extending the scope of the 2004 Guidelines. LARG follows up the work of the Language and National Origin Group (LNOG), who jointly authored the influential 2004 Guidelines for the Use of Language Analysis in relation to Questions of National Origin in Refugee Cases, and have organized discussions since then in a range of academic and professional meetings.
Language Analysis for Determination of Origin (LADO) is a new branch of applied linguistics, used by governments in processing asylum seekers who are applying for refugee status. Applicants are interviewed by government agencies seeking to ascertain whether they speak the language of a group they say they belong to, as part of testing their claim to come from a certain nation, region or group. Speech recordings are typically analysed to determine whether an applicant's speech patterns show expected features of the specific language variety spoken by their claimed group. The key question that can be addressed scientifically is not one of nationality but of language socialization and speech community membership, which is a sociolinguistic matter.