Project Proposal & Detailed Project

Plan

TRE432

Atiye Özgün TEZER - 010519001

Beyza Nur GÜVEN - 010519009

Bilge KAHRAMAN- 010520008

Fatma Betül ALKAN - 010518018

Fatma Esra KELEŞOĞLU - 010518011

Gülhilal IŞIK - 010518030

CONTENTS
 1. Information Gathering

1.1. Translators Without Borders

1.2. NAATI

1.3. Stepes

1.4. 911 Interpreters

1.5. National Standard Guide for Community Interpreting Services

1.6. IAD (ARÇ)

1.7. Interpretation Services for Foreigners in Korea

1.8. Indonesian Journal of Disability Studies

1.8.1. Access to Disclosure of Disasters Information for Deaf Citizen through Sign
Language Interpreter

1.9. JICA

1.10. GCI

2. Problem Analysis

2.1. Coordination

2.2. Training

2.3. Glossary

3. Idea Generation

3.1. Coordination

3.2. Training

3.3. Glossary

1. INFORMATION GATHERING

1.1. Translators Without Borders

Translators Without Borders is a non-profit organization that provides translation services for
humanitarian non-profits.

Their Scope: US, the Caribbean, El Salvador, Bangladesh; West Africa, Europe, Middle
East, Asia.

Their Work:

Words of Relief: This is a crisis response translation network intended to eliminate the
language barriers and improve communications between crisis-affected communities and
humanitarian responders before, during, and after a crisis.

Translators without Borders does this by:

● Training translators and interpreters
● Translating critical messages before crises occur.
● Building networks of trained translators
● Developing freely downloadable multilingual glossary apps

Gamayun, the language equality initiative: This initiative aims to bridge the language gap
which causes people speaking marginalized languages to be unable to access information that
can “lift them out of poverty, get health care, recover from a crisis, or understand their
rights.” (Translators Without Borders, 2022)

The initiative does this by:

● Gathering text and speech data to make it easier to automate marginalized
languages.
● Building advanced technology-driven solutions for both text-based and voice-based
communication using this data

Kató: This is a translation workspace that “connects non-profit organizations worldwide with
a community of language professionals who work together to ensure that critical health,
crisis response, and human rights information is available in local languages.”
(Translators Without Borders, 2022) People in this workspace provide subtitles and voice-
overs using computer-assisted translation tools, machine translation, translation
memory, and enhanced quality assurance tools.
TWB Chatbots: The organization has three chatbots;
● Uji for the Democratic Republic of the Congo
● Shehu for Northeast Nigeria
● Planet Azul OIM for Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico
These chatbots use Natural Language Processing that allows users to ask questions in their
own words and receive relevant answers in the same language.

TWB Glossaries: This tool assists humanitarian field workers and interpreters working
on responses across the globe. It has an offline format with a built-in audio feature.

1.2. NAATI

NAATI is the national standards and certifying body for translation and interpreting in
Australia.

Prerequisite Requirements:

● Formal training in translation or interpreting

● Demonstrating English proficiency
● Ethical and intercultural competency. (NAATI, 2023)

Recertification: Any translator or interpreter must apply every three years. This process;

● allows practitioners to demonstrate that they are actively maintaining their skills and
knowledge
● supports the ongoing professionalism of the industry
● assures the community that only practicing professionals hold current NAATI
credentials. (NAATI, 2023)

1.3. STEPES

Their vision:
Stepes help their clients overcome global linguistic and cultural barriers and enable them to
accelerate business growth in international markets.

Like Big Data that has changed the way the world processes information, Stepes’ vision is to
ignite the “Big Translation” revolution to provide global enterprises and individuals with fast,
high quality, and affordable language solutions that are rendered instantly anywhere and
anytime, on all devices, platforms, and channels.

About:

Trusted by top Fortune 500 companies and leading enterprises globally, Stepes helps their
clients succeed in international markets with speed. Stepes disrupts the old translation models
with their online and mobile powered human translation solutions that deliver on-demand and
professional language translation services at scale, in over 100 languages, and on six different
continents.

Emergency Translations

Stepes provides on-demand and super-fast language translation services with the highest
linguistic quality to meet their clients’ emergency translation requirements. Their emergency
language services are purposely designed for timely multilingual news announcements,
urgent commercial response translations, medical emergency interpretation, natural disaster
restoration translations, and crisis communication translation services. Powered with their
cloud-based, all-platform translation solutions, they deliver certified translation services with
speed and scale. Stepes is always open for business and their global teams of linguists work
around the clock, 24/7/365. Just drag and drop your documents onto their online portal to
receive a free instant quote. Upon your confirmation, they’ll immediately start translating
using their highly qualified professional translators in over 100 languages.

Disaster Restoration and Recovery Translations

Do you need superfast language translation services to support your disaster recovery
operations such as commercial accidents, fires, storms, floods, or other natural disasters?
Stepes has the best linguistic resources and on-demand solutions to meet all of your
emergency translation needs for disaster restoration, recovery, and crisis management efforts.
We have the language technology solutions to meet all of your multilingual localization
needs for your mission critical applications in times of need. Fast and accurate
communication is key for disaster restoration and Stepes has the linguistic experience, best-
in-class processes, and industry-leading language technologies to meet all of your disaster
translation needs.

1.4. 911 Interpreters

While I was searching for a line that does online interpreting, I found ‘’911 Interpreters’’
which is a translation and interpreting services hotline. And, not having enough interpreters
in the area is a serious problem, I thought maybe we needed to create a hotline for this very
reason. ‘’911 Interpreters’’ provides telephone, video, onsite, written translation services, but
what we need is telephone interpretation service this time. In ‘’911 Interpreters’’ services are
available for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year which means they work all the
time. That is a great thing because you don’t know when you will need it the most.

For 911 Interpreters’ telephone translation:

● Dial their toll free number,

● Provide the operator with your contact info or assigned access code,
● Request the language your client speaks,
● Operator will connect you to a qualified interpreter.

1.5. National Standard Guide for Community Interpreting Services

I looked up for some dictionaries which can be used and reached from everywhere at any
time for those in need. Dictionaries that are online and also in PDF form can be used when
you are also offline, if you have already downloaded it on the device that you are using.
These kinds of guides can help the interpreters to grasp the importance of the things quickly.
Even if there is some word that you forgot the meaning of, you can just take a look at the
dictionary and then continue doing your job. The thing that makes the online dictionaries
easy is that you can search the word without flipping pages too many times and that also
saves time too. Not only that, in the ‘’National Standard Guide’’ it also explains some
responsibilities, principles, ethics and almost everything that an interpreter must have. Taking
this into account, an online dictionary like that can be useful for many interpreters that work
in the field.

1.6. IAD (ARÇ)

Reviewing the literature, I came across with studies focusing on various aspects of
organization, mobilization and need in times of disasters. Yet, the main purpose of this report
is evaluating all these situations in terms of translation or multilingual disaster
communication./ It is a well-known fact that no country is fully capable of coping with the
chaos and crisis in times of disasters by itself. Thus, global help is a must. Not surprisingly
the word “global” brings one more companion with itself which is “translation”. Chaos can
only be achieved through good communication and when it comes to global issues good
communication can only be achieved through translation./ So, language related aid is just as
crucial as food aid, sheltering and medical assistance in times of disasters. /Since each
disaster is of its own kind with regard to situational factors and the background, the aid
should be accordingly. However, the inherent complexity of disasters, their uniqueness and
the collapse of infrastructures does not change the significance of effective planning and
organization between the professionals and non-professionals in the field (Rogl 2017, 2). In
her study Rogl (ibid.) states that thanks to technological developments, in the Haiti
earthquake of 2010 interpreters could be quickly informed. Facebook, Twitter, and the
websites such as proZ.com, translatorsCafe.com helped interpreters and translators follow the
current situation and need in the field. /However, getting informed or acting as a small group
itself is not enough to help others. For any help to actually help someone, it must be
organized. Even if technological advances make the use of alerts and early warning systems
possible, disasters never strike when the affected region is adequately ready. So there must be
organizations established and ready for emergencies. And these organizations can only be of
help when they are in a strong communication with institutions that are on the forefront in the
field such as Red Crescent, Ministry of Health and the like (Doğan and Kahraman 2011, 67).
After the 1999 Marmara region earthquake, for example, IAD (ARÇ) was launched by the
Department of Translation in İstanbul University to train volunteer individuals consisting of
interpreters, translators or people being competent in languages to prepare qualified teams for
cases of emergency (Bulut and Kurultay 2014, 250). Since then they have been providing
volunteer individuals of the kind listed above with a special training and they are in
communication with UMKE, Directorate of Civil Defence and the Translation Association.
Though the organization has had numerous accomplishments, they still lack of being in
strong communication with governmental organizations and also with NGOs on the forefront.
The current experience of the 2023 earthquake in southeastern Turkey showed that
organizations in terms of multilingual communication service are still not enough.

1.7. Interpretation Services for Foreigners in Korea1

In today's world, more and more people are traveling between countries and especially when
they travel to another country to live there, they might need to learn about the rules of that
country. In this section, South Korea will be the focus point. When a disaster comes out in
South Korea, foreign people staying or living there without knowing native language could
use the "bbb interpretation" application . It has free three-way interpretation service and is
available 24 hours a day in 20 languages including Turkish. It is also a non-profit
organization registered with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism running the service
through volunteers who can speak foreign languages. Although the service is runned via
whoever speaks foreign languages, it might be the first and the most logical step of a
successful application which only enables qualified interpreters to speak to foreign people or
foreign disaster victims. Another opportunity for those having questions about laws on
staying in South Korea is to use the line 1345 Immigration Contact Center, an affiliate of the
Ministry of Justice. Similarly, the foreigners could call 1330 Korea Travel Hotline for using
interpretation services if they have problem communicating with employees at
accomodations, restaurants or malls. Last but not least, Danuri Helpline 1577-1366 aims at
helping marriage immigrants settle there and provide comprehensive information for
multicultural families.

1.8. Indonesian Journal of Disability Studies

1.8.1. Access to Disclosure of Disasters Information for Deaf Citizen through Sign
Language Interpreter2

The study draws attention to the entry to acknowledgement of disaster information for deaf
citizens, mainly of Indonesia, through sign language interpreters. This study aimed to
understand the challenges faced by Deaf citizens in accessing information on natural disasters

1 [While in Korea] Episode 18 – Interpretation services for foreigners in Korea : Korea.net : The official
website of the Republic of Korea
2 Access to Disclosure of Disasters Information for Deaf People through Sign Language Interpreter | Indonesian
Journal of Disability Studies (ub.ac.id)
around them, their needs on accessing said information, and the obstacles faced in providing
Sign Language Interpreters. It employed a qualitative approach analyzing the related
document/literature to gather data from various international as well as national articles in
general. The presence of sign language interpreters is essential to bridge communication
between society and the entire Deaf population, ultimately to access the news and
information about natural disasters. Natural disasters can be efficiently reduced by the
effective dissemination of information and news. For Deaf citizens, however, it has been
inaccessible because of the lack of sign language interpreters. In the Persons with Disability
Act Article 8 Year 2016 the Indonesian legal system has been highlighting the rights of
individuals with disabilities to obtain information related disaster mitigation activities.
(Pertiwi, Llewellyn, & Villeneuve, 2019) Deaf persons make up roughly 7.03 percent of
Indonesia's (Kemenkes RI, 2019) total population with disabilities, which is projected to be
around 30.38 million people. (Al Anshori, 2020) According to Mäkipää & Hämesalo (1993)
in the article (Kurz & Mikulasek, 2004), the World Federation of the Deaf and other groups
have consistently raised issues with the media regarding the need for greater sign language
interpretation services and subtitles in their productions for Deaf and HoH persons. The
difficulties faced by Deaf people can be summed up as a lack or complete absence of a
communication bridge through Sign Language in the area that is about to be affected by
natural disasters, such as the absence of available Interpreters and the need to use a phone to
access health services, etc. There are a few points that need to be elaborated. According to the
report from the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and World Association of Sign
Language Interpreters (WASLI), a list of qualified sign language interpreters who can handle
disaster situations in real time should be compiled, security protocols should be implemented
for qualified sign language interpreters, and sign language interpreters should be present at all
press conferences related to disasters or other emergency situations (Leeson, 2020). To help
identify and meet the requirements of Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in the case of a
disaster, those who work for agencies or institutions that handle disaster management and
emergency services must also get training. According to Wijaya (Wijaya, 2018), the majority
of Sign Language Interpreters who are currently employed in Indonesia do not hold special
education credentials or training. Instead, they are volunteers who care about the Deaf
community. In the beginning, these sign language interpreters, according to Prasodjo
(Prasodjo, 2019), were taken from family or relatives who have deep ties to the Deaf
community so that they could become their helpers and give Deaf people access to the
outside world. There is also a Sign Language Interpreter Service Center (PLJ) in Indonesia,
which is directly run by Deaf individuals who use sign language and serves as a tool for
facilitating information accessibility for Deaf citizens (Nandaafrz, 2020). Hence, given that
(Kellett Bidoli, 2010) said that the establishment of the Sign Language Interpreter as a
profession would normally take some time, the challenges in providing Sign Language
Interpreters so far have some relevance to the current status of Deaf people. This is because
worldwide certification for sign language interpreters is still not widely available, despite
studies on sign language. In order to achieve information disclosure for Deaf people,
especially in catastrophe information, which again currently faces difficulties, it is imperative
that the Government recognize Sign Language Interpreter as a profession and the urgency of
its presence for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people.

1.9.
In order to analyse the problems, we first researched what has been done in Türkiye and
around the world on disaster relief and disaster interpreting. In Türkiye, AFAD comes first to
mind, when we think about disaster relief operations and in terms of translation we learned
that Sabancı and ARÇ have interpreting services for disaster zones. If we look
internationally, Japan comes to mind when it comes to earthquakes or natural disasters. We
looked at what Japan does on natural disasters, what kind of teams they have and whether
they have interpratation services. Two of the things we found are as follows: //

JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency)

JICA has offices in europe, asia, latin america, middle east, africa and ocenia. They have an
office in Ankara, Türkiye. // JICA dispatches Japan Disaster Relief (JDR) teams and provides
emergency relief supplies when major disasters occur, mainly in but not limited to developing
areas, in response to requests received from the governments of affected countries or
international agencies. As personnel assistance, JICA's Disaster Relief Program dispatches
rescue team, medical team, expert team, SDF and infectious diseases response team. JICA
actively develops alliances with related organizations in order to contribute to the swift
implementation of relief services at the disaster site. JDR came to help rescue operations in
February 6 eartquake and helped for 2 weeks for debris rescue activities but they do not have
interpreting services //

1.10.

GCI (Global Community Interaction)

People who came to Japan to live, they often face the pain of discrimination and disdain from
Japanese residents while facing urgent issues such as welfare and human rights. This
discrimination includes both institutional and prejudice by people. GCI will tear down those
walls. Through grassroots support activities, this will highlight the problems facing Japanese
society, and will serve as a foundation for change not at the national level but at the local
level. They also have a Disaster and Emergency Communicator Program GCI provides short
and long term language assistance in daily lives in times of disaster. GCI’s key staff is
interpreters in case of emergency authorized by GCI, who are trained through some
workshops.

2. PROBLEM ANALYSIS

Problem 1. Coordination

● the lack of an official organization that oversees the activities of the translators and
interpreters;
● the members of certain certificate programs changing/not updating their contact
information.

Problem 2. Training
 ● the lack of a certificate that states that the language service provider in question is a
qualified translator/interpreter, and is equipped with the necessary information and
training to work in disaster areas.
● the members of certain certificate programs not updating their knowledge of the area.
● the lack of access to education by those who can speak the language.

Problem 3. Glossary

● the lack of glossaries, especially when it's needed the most.

● in emergency cases, it’s hard to find a good glossary that explains everything clearly
and in pdf format.
● and for the ones that are ready, it is hard to use them in the times where a disaster
happened because they are in online format.

3. IDEA GENERATION

Idea 1. Coordination

As stated above language-related relief organizations must be in strong communication with

both NGOs and governmental organizations. New protocols are needed to be signed with
institutions on the forefront in the field. Therefore, the training might be provided within the
body of consulates, ministries and the like. By this way, all the trained individuals will
roughly know the same amount of information. Additionally, contact information of those
individuals would be present in consulates so that they could be easily accessed and informed
in case of an emergency. They must be deployed as the search and rescue teams are being
deployed. Apart from that interpreters providing service via telephone line should be reached
from the emergency line of the relevant country. A different line number would be inefficient
so the calls should be directed by the existing emergency line.

Idea 2. Training

One language, one person. One language could take you another person, or you could take
another person's life. Learning a language is never enough for translators and/or interpreters,
especially for those required to work in disaster areas. To assure that language service
providers are qualified translators and/or interpreters and have the required knowledge to
work in disaster areas, it is basically the best option to train them so as not to be wavered
while enabling a healthy communication between crisis-affected communities and
humanitarian responders before, during and later on a crisis. (Translators Without Borders,
2022) After observing the Kahramanmaraş based earthquake on 6th February, it has been
decided to take an application of having the first contact with translators and/or interpreters a
step forward. To obtain this step, only those who applied to the application and approved of
their commitment will be sent to the crisis-affected areas. Later on applying to the
application, they will be trained by Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency
(AFAD) until they will get a certification showing they are now qualified
translators/interpreters and equipped with acknowledgements of necessity and training to
work in those areas. The training of the agency contains courses of search and rescue
information, surviving in hazardous areas, and conversation with victims of disaster. In
addition to that step, they will be expected to take the quizzes on the application every 2
months so as not to lose track of training.

Idea 3. Glossary

Our solution idea for Glossary is to make an application. During the 6 February earthquake,
there was a need for terminology and interpreters. Everyone who knew a second language
went to the disaster area without having the proper interpreting education. To prevent this,
official translators will be sent to the region by our company. We decided to make a glossary
that only these translators can use. There will be many terms from natural disaster terms to
medical terms. There will also be a sign language version of these terms. After the dictionary
is downloaded to the application, it can be used offline. The dictionary will be updated when
it is online.

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