GET INVOLVED WITH COP16: How many languages can you speak?

[Hilary Bowman]

Hi everyone!

With COP16 rapidly approaching, the YOUNGO constituency have a lot of new volunteer positions that need to be filled. We're sending out the call to the youth climate movement to find the amazing people to take on these roles!

Translation Co-Ordinator

Do you speak two or more languages*? If so, we need you to keep the youth climate movement growing, and ensure broad participation in COP16.

One of the greatest assets of YOUNGO is its diversity of representation. To keep it this way, we need to make sure that there's equal access to essential materials. To achieve this, we need translators!

The youth climate movement relies on some pretty amazing people who volunteer their time to translate important materials. We need someone to work with these volunteers, support them, and ensure that YOUNGO has enough capacity for this very essential task. Most of this stuff will be done online, through the translation Google Group.

But exactly what would the Translation Co-Ordinator be doing?

• Firstly, determining our translation capacity. This includes:

  • How many volunteer translators we have;

  • How much work they can do;

  • What languages they speak.

• Determining roughly how much translation we need in and out of which languages.

• Identifying any languages where we do not have enough translators.

• Recruiting volunteer translators, through the UNFCCC_youth and YouthClimate email lists

• Support the volunteer translators; making sure they don't have too much work, they're not having trouble, etc.

• Organise regular online meetings with translators, when possible.

• Provide occasional updates to the Bottomliner team about progress

• Initiate discussions about improving language access within YOUNGO, and to communicate the translation opinions to the broader community.

The person filling this role does NOT need to be going to COP16.

Sound good to you?

If you'd like to be involved with this role, send Kyle an email with a short paragraph about your skills, at kyleg...@sustainus.org! (Please don't reply to the whole list!)

(Also, if you're not interested in the Coordinator role but would be happy to translate materials when you have free time, please just send Kyle an email at the above address letting him know your languages spoken. Thanks!)

This is one of many positions currently available. For a full list of other available roles, please email Hilary (bowman...@gmail.com) or Kyle (kyleg...@sustainus.org)

*Unfortunately, Elvish does not count.