Practicing Language Justice for Movement Building in COVID-19

As our communities mobilize mutual aid networks, support hotlines, and other autonomous interventions to survive COVID-19, we must center a multilingual strategy to respond to the immediate and long-term recovery needs.

When Mutual Aid NYC brought me on to help expand the organization’s translation apparatus, I responded by elevating questions around access and equity: a) how will we disseminate or reach the community of x language (or will the materials live on the website without an outreach plan? If yes, this is called: just translating to translate, and I’m not with it.)? b) how much will we pay translators? Long story short, Mutual Aid NYC will stipend translators through a Translation Fund. A multilingual strategy requires onboarding language access providers for translation and interpretation services and a commitment to funding language access.

I know these are hard times and paying activated volunteers may not feel urgent. But, language access providers are leaders on the frontlines. And from experience building and working with countless translators, a thoughtfully translated version of something is resistance and revolutionary, and in this moment, means access to proper care and services.

When the US federal care arm Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out its preliminary guidance about COVID-19, it was only available in English. It took many days and a letter from the Congressional Tri-Caucus members for the CDC to put out translated materials. With or without the CDC’s translations, so many of us, this includes community members and organizations, activists, local electeds, promptly stepped up and created our own multilingual literature and videos. We stepped up like we always do.

Artwork by Ann Van

Accessible translation fills the gap of inadequate systems in America that are failing us and not equipped to enact a multi-pronged care structure to protect the hardest hit communities: service workers, rent-burdened households, and people of color. The COVID-19 pandemic is showing us that language access is a public health issue.

Many of us rely on unpaid, informal systems to disseminate information to limited English proficient communities. It is time for organizers to hack and overwhelm status quo systems by practicing what felt unattainable in the past, and funding language access is one of many interventions. The recommended readings listed below don’t explicitly demand funding language access work. However, they push readers to understand that language access work is real and essential work for the survival of limited English proficient communities. Our practice of implementing language justice and multilingual strategies requires long-term funding.

Movement and political spaces, service based organizations and advocacy groups, City Council offices, and others fund language access when the funding is available but more often than not, resort to and rely on an unpaid volunteer language bank or internal staff members who may speak, read and write in the language. These are unsustainable practices for the sanctuary of a multilingual city, and especially in moments of crises like COVID-19.

Many translation and interpretation providers are working-class immigrants and undocumented gig workers. While there are language access providers who may refuse honorarium for their work (and we are grateful for them), that practice should not inform our movement’s default take on funding language access.

Funding language access creates a culture of shifting power, expands democratic participation, and centers the wellness and survival of the most disenfranchised communities.

Here are some resources to sharpen analysis on why language access is critical for social change:

1. How to Build Language Justice by Libros Antena Books
2. Language Justice Toolkit: Multilingual Strategies for Community Organizing by Communities Creating Healthy Environments
3. No Access: The Need for Improved Language Assistance Services for Limited English Proficient Asian Tenants of NYCHA, report by CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities
4. A Platform for Radical Language Justice in NYC by Shahana Hanif
5. What is Language Justice and Why Does it Matter in Oral History Work?
6. These Interpreters Are Bringing a Radical Approach to Language Access

Other language justice literature that should be on this list? Let me know at shahana.hanif@gmail.com.