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Social Science learning initiative – Sociolinguistic Translation Training

Background

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) provides life-saving emergency relief and longer-term medical care to some of the most vulnerable and excluded communities around the world. As an independent medical humanitarian organisation, we deliver care based only on need, regardless of ethnic origin, gender, religion or political affiliation.

The Manson Unit (MU) is a multi-disciplinary medical team within MSF UK and is the London-based part of Operational Centre Amsterdam’s (OCA) Public Health Department. We aim to improve the quality of MSF’s medical programmes worldwide, so the best possible care is delivered to our patients. 

The MU is a team of 30 comprised of medical doctors and specialists in infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases, health information systems, epidemiology, social science, geographical information systems, medical editing and research communication.

The Social Science team is developing a learning initiative, for project-based colleagues including anthropologists, health promotion and similar profiles leading social science practices and research methods.

Our team members have different educational backgrounds and roles, who want to develop their skills and understanding. Participants are involved in or using translation in research or other activities where translation requires sensitive reading of context such as person-centred care; community approaches; environmental health; maternal health, mental health, among others.

The training seeks to foreground the importance of translation in research and programmes taking place in humanitarian settings. It will look at some of the technical challenges of translating from MSF’s dominant language, English, into a broad range of target languages, with different ranges of terminologies, different literatures, and different ways of conceptualising health and illness. It will also look at political factors affecting translation – why is research planned and disseminated in English, why are translators not included in research and programme planning, why are translation skills valued less than statistical skills.

Objective

MSF invests in research and assessment activities to improve quality of care which are almost entirely conducted in English.

Local translators are brought in, often late in the process, to suggest ways of communicating English terms and conceptual frameworks in languages which have little in common with English. They may have relatively little information about the purpose of the work, and be required to navigate complicated consent protocols, making ad hoc rapid judgements about specific terms, which due to language misrepresentation may impact on certain aspects of social difference.

Aim

To increase the participants awareness of the complexity of translation, and to incorporate this into their planning. The training will offer an opportunity to reflect on translation gaps and shortcomings and allow participants to develop ideas on how to address gaps/shortcomings and to examine technical and political aspects of translation.

Expected results

The design and delivery of training with recommendations for future improvement and adoption. This should include information and analysis of the challenges of translation in humanitarian settings.

Deliverables

  • Training concept, structure and content designed including defined learning objectives.
  • Delivery of the training.
  • The training will have encouraged participants to debate on language technical and political aspects in the context of a social science project.
  • Development of supporting training materials
  • Design of the training evaluation.
  • Recommendations made for future development and adoption. 

Requirements

  • Prior experience working and collaborating with partners within cross cultural settings and humanitarian settings.
  • Demonstrable experience of developing and delivering and training.
  • Team members with:

- qualifications in sociolinguistics (PhD preferred).
- ability to stimulate and facilitate debates.
- ability to work with a multidisciplinary, multi-located team.
- excellent analytical, written skills.
- research experience
- proven experience of working independently under minimal supervision.
- good presentation skills / public speaking experience.
- strong communication and interpersonal skills.
- ability to complete work within specific timescales. 
- commitment to the aims and values of MSF.

Please submit the following by 11:59 pm, Monday 28 August:

  • Your proposed fees
  • Your proposed plan to achieve the deliverables, including timelines.
  • Examples of similar work undertaken previously.
  • CV(s) of team members involved.

For further questions, please contact: adminmu@london.msf.org