From International Translation Day to Thanksgiving!

On Friday, September 30^th we celebrated the International translation day. According to the web page of the CEATL (Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires or European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations)   https://www.ceatl.eu/ the origin of this holiday is that Sept 30^th is the Feast Day of Saint Jerome, Who was the first to translate the Bible into Latin and is considered the patron saint of the translators. In Toronto, I had the opportunity to attend the event organised by the MCIS Language Services (http://mcislanguages.com/). It was a great opportunity to share with friends who are interpreters, translators and other language lovers.

During the event, there was a panel session with participants who shared their experiences working with Syrian refugees and the role of translation.  What we can read in the media is never close to what we can hear from those who were there, assisting people who came to Canada from a very conflictive zone, after years living in very hard conditions, and now they have the opportunity to settle in a country where they do not know the language and how to start a new life. The task got more difficult when our interpreters found that some of the newcomers don’t know how to write or read. The different dialects spoken among refugees represented another challenge. At the end, my personal experience was a mix of emotions. Being myself from a family where my elders were refugees, listening to the stories was like remember some of the stories that I heard from my Grandparents. Being myself an immigrant makes me feel more connected not only to refugees but also to the Interpreters who assisted in this project, most of them also immigrants in this country.

I had the opportunity to take a look on the statistics that shows the history of Canada, as a country where refugees and immigrants have found a safe place to call home.  Canada has been assisting refugees from other parts of the world as well. According to the page http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/timeline.asp the History goes back to 1776 when around 3000 black loyalists came to Canada escaping from the oppression of the American Revolution. By 2010, Canada has accepted refugees from more than 140 countries, with very different cultures and languages. According to the Office of the United Nations high Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 2004 to 2013, Colombia, with 17381 refugees, was the country from where most of them have come. In second place, we have China, with 15344 refugees. Sri Lanka comes third, with 12326 refugees. Then we have, in this same order, Pakistan, Haiti, Mexico and India. 

This Weekend, Canada will celebrate Thanksgiving. It  will be an opportunity to be with family and friends, have a nice meal, and for those who came from other parts of the world will be also an opportunity to thank God for this Great Country where we live now, in many languages,  and may be, to be thankful for having somebody else who speaks our language, no matter which language is, and maybe…. For that Interpreter or translator we met and helped us to communicate with others.