Professor Angela Crack from the University of Portsmouth shares some key insights from the translation glossary project, a joint collaboration between Angela and Professor Michael Chasukwa from the University of Malawi. Angela and Michael recently held a workshop for SIDA members on this topic, designed to help those working with communities where English is not their first language, with the aim of building more equal partnerships and overcoming language barriers in sustainable global development.
It is commonly acknowledged that good communication is essential for successful projects and partnerships. However, in our highly multilingual and multicultural world, ensuring good communication is no mean feat, and the importance of translation does not tend to receive enough appreciation in the NGO space. It’s all too easy to rely on English as a lingua franca when working internationally, especially in the field of global development that has been dominated by English from its very inception. Words like ‘sustainability’ or ‘gender’ are permanent fixtures in development discourse, but direct equivalents of these concepts do not exist in most of the world’s languages. When translated or adopted as loan words, they can appear alien or opaque to non-English speakers.
Of course, the dominance of English in global development reflects the legacy of the British Empire and American hegemony post-Cold War. It produced a linguistic context in which ‘Western’ knowledge and priorities set the terms of debate, where proficiency in English confers privilege, and where speakers of local languages are marginalised. AI tools can give the misleading impression that translation solutions can be found at the click of a button: but they also reflect and reinforce dominant linguistic power structures, and often fall short in providing contextually sensitive translations for speakers of local languages in low-income communities.
It is extremely tough for external development actors to build trustful relationships with local partners and communities where there is a language capacity gap. This was one of the key findings of a research project that I worked on with Professor Hilary Footitt and Dr Wine Tesseur, called The Listening Zones of NGOs. Across several organisations and country contexts, we found that many NGO workers cannot speak the languages of the communities they serve. Translation challenges often lead to misunderstandings, feelings of being disrespected, and project failure.
This finding inspired a follow-up project, co-led by myself and Professor Michael Chasukwa from the University of Malawi. We wondered what locally led translation could look like, leading to the question: what if communities themselves led the translation process?
The follow-up project was called The Translation Glossary Project, taking place in Malawi where both Chichewa and English are official languages. In participatory workshops in Lilongwe and Zomba, community members created the first Chichewa-English glossary of development terms. Over 3 days, they collaborated in producing nearly 400 translations pertaining to subjects as diverse as climate change, gender-based violence and governance. Dozens of these translations had not previously been included in authoritative tomes such as the Oxford Chichewa-English Dictionary. It was a remarkable achievement because none of the community members had any training or professional experience in translation. The glossary they produced was not exhaustive, and their translations did not always meet standards of technical precision. However, that was not the point or expectation. Instead, their translations were culturally resonant and made good sense to ordinary people who are not well versed in development jargon.
The community members decided on the content of the glossary. Words were not simply translated from English to Chichewa, but also the other way round. They included scores of translations for Chichewa words that correspond with local understandings of development, resulting in a tool that facilitates a two-way conversation rather than a unidirectional translation exercise.
The participatory translation method that we used meant that the glossary became something far more profound than a dictionary. Instead, it was a co-created product that bridged professional and community perspectives and centred the knowledge and priorities of the people involved.
The workshops were a powerful space of creativity and critical discussion. The interactive group exercises that led to the translations opened up deeper discussions about what the concepts really mean in communities – and in some instances, what they should mean.
For me, this journey has reaffirmed the importance of translation. Translation should not be regarded as a technical ‘add-on’ to development practice; rather, it can be about building relationships, fostering understanding and nurturing respectful relationships. Bridging the language gap is an unavoidable challenge if we are serious about building stronger partnerships and more locally led solutions.
Our hope is that this Chichewa-English glossary will be the first of many. We want to see other communities and organisations adapting this participatory model to their own languages and contexts – co-creating new glossaries, and in the process, new ways of understanding development itself.
To quote one of our participants in the post-workshop evaluation: ‘It is important that other people know our meanings and for future generations because other people are having the wrong meaning….we know how to produce good terms and easy understanding.’
Invitation to SIDA members
If you are interested in how your organisation might do similar work, I encourage you to visit our website and download our free open-access resources. Alongside the glossary, we have a Step-by-Step Guide for practitioners that explains how to run your own participatory workshops – in any set of languages. You don’t need to be a linguist or require a large budget. The process is deliberately designed to be as simple as possible. I would be delighted to provide further advice if you would like a 1-2-1 meeting.