Does sustainable development make sense 'on the ground'? Participatory translation and anti-racism for the third sector

• In Event: In a collaborative pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals? Reflections on development CSO-practices in Africa

Abstract

The UN Secretary-General’s report, Our Common Agenda, reiterates the importance of the commitment of the Sustainable Development Goals to ‘leave no one behind’. However, the deleterious impacts of linguistic exclusion on international development work is barely considered by policy-makers and NGO practitioners, let alone satisfactorily addressed (Footitt et al 2020, Tesseur 2022). This paper gives an overview of a multidisciplinary research endeavour between third sector/translation scholars to provide a local solution to this global problem. It describes how a Chichewa translation glossary of international development terminology was co-produced with communities in Malawi through participatory workshops, with the aim of facilitating communication between development stakeholders. It explains our achievements in enhancing the impact of this project by helping NGO practitioners to run their own workshops in different languages (Chasukwa & Crack, 2022). I argue that NGOs should conceptualise translation in vernacular languages as an anti-racist practice, and I reflect on lessons learned for academics and practitioners with similar normative and methodological concerns.

References
Chasukwa, M., and Crack, A. M. (2022). Translation Glossary Project. http://translationglossary.org
Footitt, H., Crack, A. M., & Tesseur, W. (2020) Development NGOs and Languages: Listening, Power and Inclusion. Palgrave.
Tesseur, W. (2023) Translation as Social Justice. Routledge.

Author

• Angela Crack, University of Portsmouth