Language solutions for education in emergencies

We are pleased to invite you to join us for an informational and practical webinar about language solutions for education in emergencies.

Webinar Recordings (October 16) or (October 18) and Presentation

Making materials accessible and easy to understand is vital in education in emergencies. This applies to teacher training materials, community engagement campaigns, field guides for humanitarian workers,  classroom materials, and much more. To this end, INEE is teaming up with Translators without Borders (TWB) to present on the themes of plain language writing and language technology for the education sector. 

These themes were identified as key topics of interest in the results of the survey on language in EiE that INEE and TWB conducted in June 2019. Read below for more about the two topics that will be presented during the webinar. (Click to see the survey results summary in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.) 

Plain Language - Plain-language writing has clear potential to help humanitarian organizations communicate more effectively with each other and with the populations they support. A growing body of evidence confirms that plain-language writing improves readers' comprehension, retention, and recall. Despite being a deceptively simple term, plain language involves much more than using simple words and avoiding humanitarian jargon. In this session, TWB's Plain Language Adviser will explain some key plain-language principles and use examples to show how they can result in clearer communication.

Language Technology - Many, if not most, of the 177 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in the world today cannot communicate with aid workers. They can't be understood and can’t understand vital information about education provision because it's not in their language. If they do attend school, for many the classroom materials will be in a language they do not speak. Advanced language technology can help bridge this language gap. In this session, learn how machine translation can change the way humanitarian organizations communicate. TWB will present how its Gamayun Project ensures all voices are heard, regardless of language or literacy.

Presenters

Kate Murphy is a Plain Language Adviser with Translators without Borders (TWB), with responsibility for developing and managing our plain-language services to our partner organizations. She has been a technical writer and editor in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors for more than 20 years, and is also qualified to teach English to adult learners. This combination of expertise gives her valuable insight into the importance of using established plain-language principles to improve communication. Kate has been associated with TWB in various capacities since 2014.

Grace Tang first joined Translators without Borders (TWB) in January 2014 to launch the Words of Relief pilot in Kenya and to scale the project to respond to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. She returned at the end of 2018 to lead the Gamayun Language Equality Initiative. Grace has over 15 years of experience leading teams in project and change management, strategy development and implementation, organizational design, field operations, and emergency response in complex humanitarian contexts.