A translation app launched by the descendants of Muslim immigrants facilitates communication for refugees, helping them settle into their new homes and access critical services, writes Ahmed Gabr.
At a time when migrant and refugee crises become increasingly complicated and the need for acceptance and tolerance grows, the world is certainly turning into a less welcoming place for those driven away from their homes.
Based on data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for 2017, the number of reported hate crimes increased by 17% year-on-year, rising from 6,121 in 2016 to 7,175 in 2017.
A big part of the problem may be related to communication issues. “The growing xenophobia and hate for immigrants are because of a lack of understanding of people's history, languages, and culture,” says Atif Javed, co-founder of Tarjimly, a smartphone app offering instant multilingual translation services to refugees everywhere.
GIVING REFUGEES A VOICE
Tarjimly operates through a network of more than 11,000 volunteers around the globe, connecting them through their smartphones to thousands of refugees and their humanitarian aid workers. The service, which supports 105 languages, is offered for free and enables refugees to communicate effectively with doctors, lawyers, and the communities that host them.
“We believe it's a human right to be heard and understood,” says Javed. “Now more than ever, we need communities and platforms to elevate refugee voices - we shouldn't see them as statistics, rather as the courageous, resilient, and passionate people they are,” he adds.
Since its launch in 2017 amid the Syrian refugee crisis, Tarjimly has been a go-to solution for NGOs and humanitarian agencies involved in helping refugees. It has provided an affordable and easily accessible solution for aid workers, allowing them to communicate with refugees irrespective of their mother tongues and without the need for machine translation hardware, in-person translators or enterprise call centres.
BUILDING BRIDGES TO A NEW, SUSTAINABLE LIFE
Javed and his co-founding partner, Aziz Alghunaim, both aged 26, hold dual citizenship and are the descendants of Muslim immigrants. As such, they have witnessed many of the challenges immigrants and refugees have to deal with on a daily basis in their new western communities.
The two young men felt obliged to launch Tarjimly, starting it as a side project when the “Muslim travel ban” was signed into US law. The overwhelming number of urgent calls on social media for translators and interpreters at US airports inspired Javed and Alghunaim to develop the technology used in Tarjimly. They eventually left their jobs at Palantir and Oracle to work on their project full time.
Having struggled with fund-raising and ethical dilemmas to launch Tarjimly as a non-profit company in Boston, the team can now go beyond facilitating communication for refugees to ease their transition. “It's definitely access to information and education - the two most important things to help a refugee resettle and rebuild their lives,” says Javed.
Many refugees, NGO workers and volunteers have shared stories of how facilitating communication and overcoming language barriers have helped exiles get more than the medical and legal consultations they desperately needed. Elizabeth Tadros, a Refugee Services of Texas employee, reveals that, in some instances, this has also allowed foreign-speaking refugees to transition into education and employment opportunities, enabling them to settle. "Being able to access interpretation on the go is an incredible asset," Tadros says.
Tarjimly is now focused on building strategic partnerships, aiming for incorporation into the workflow of NGOs and humanitarian organisations. The company is providing them with early access to premium features and support, along with an impact dashboard to facilitate and maximise their use of the service.
Launching a refugee paid translator programme is another milestone the team looks forward to achieving this year. It will offer refugee translators an opportunity to generate income, providing them with a pathway to economic empowerment.
“[Language access] reduces inequality to services and improves humanitarian outcomes in health, asylum, education, aid delivery, employment, and more,” Javed sums up. Going forward, the biggest challenge will be for the founders to stay true to the values of a non-profit while being able to scale enough for the company to grow.