AW: Simultaneous translation at 5-language Open Space event

[Catherine Pfaehler]

Dear Lisa

 

I find your ideas super, especially the visual artists and the colours for
the languages on the name-badge. Make sure those colours are also on a
poster in the plenary and in each workshop area so everybody knows all the
time what they mean.

 

>From my recent bilingual experience with people living with HIV, I can tell
you that they greatly appreciated translation by microphone. It was very
important for them to be seen and understood by everybody in the room with
what they had to say. Announcing topics to a public in this case also meant
consciously choosing and wanting to have witnesses. This was an important
act in itself. So we did need more time for the announcements (1 hour
instead of the pre-planned 20 minutes), but this time-span could just about
be held by the public (and I had planned for spare times here and there,
which proved to be very relaxing for all of us).

 

What if everything in the plenary was translated to English out loud, to be
heard without head-set, and in parallel to the other languages into
head-sets, only those wearing head-sets who don't understand English? (If
the flipcharts with the themes could be in all 5 languages, this would be
super!)

 

In our case, self-organization in workshops didn't work so well. People were
shy to ask others to help them translate. It was so new to them to be in
such an event that they needed a lot of time to become a "public being"
(many people living with HIV seemed to be incredibly isolated up to that
moment - and they realized it and made "self-isolation" a topic.). So
perhaps wandering translators would be a good idea in your case. 

 

We were asked to translate the workshop announcements on paper later on and
decided not to do so, telling people to ask somebody to translate for them.
Again, this didn't work so well for some. But since in Switzerland everybody
who is French-speaking must learn German in school for at least 3 - 5 years,
and vice versa, we were hoping this could be an incentive for future
activities (the life of some people living with HIV up to that moment has
been very depleted of sense. Having a second look at learning the other big
language of one's country might be a worthwile project.) and would encourage
self-responsibility. (Some of the people living with HIV have become totally
dependent from specialists and have stopped thinking for themselves. This
diagnosis is really a hammer. With the side-effects of some of the
medications they are taking, in the end you actually are unable to discern
without a specialist's help whether a hurting foot is a side-effect or just
a normal hurting foot!)

 

Last idea: what if you asked some of the monolingual participants themselves
what would serve them best?

 

Let's have the news on what was decided on and how it went. Love, Catherine

 

 

Catherine Pfaehler Senn

Open Space Begleitung & Coaching

Kellersriedweg 8

CH - 2503 Biel

+41-(0)32 - 365 68 41

c.pfaehler at bluewin.ch

 

  _____  


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