DANBURY, CT USA and DUBLIN, IRELAND 15 June 2017. Translators without Borders (TWB) and The Rosetta Foundation (TRF) have agreed to merge operations. The merger, announced today at Localization World Barcelona, brings together the two leading non-profit organizations focused on better access to information in languages people understand.
In the past five years, and especially since the devastating outbreak of Ebola in 2014-15, there has been a greater awareness that language is a critical part of humanitarian response and development work. TWB and TRF have responded by building technologies and communities of translators to ensure non-profit organizations have access to high quality local language resources. Additionally, TWB has developed its Words of Relief crisis response service, which has been active in a number of major crises, including the Ebola outbreak, Nepal earthquake and the European refugee crisis.
“We have all seen time and again, for example recently during the refugee crisis in Greece, how information can save and transform lives. For information to be effective it needs to be in local languages,” said Andrew Bredenkamp, board chair of TWB and member of the TRF board. “The need for local language information is huge, urgent, and growing fast – this merger will give us greater scalability and a stronger platform for advocacy to help meet this need.”
With this merger, the organizations will increase efficiencies and ensure that both entities continue to offer high quality language services to the aid community and the affected populations they serve.
Aimee Ansari, executive director of TWB and Olga Blasco, TRF executive for the past 1.5 years, worked together to complete the deal, backed by the boards of both organizations. Olga has said, “I’m very excited about the opportunity to work with Aimee, a veteran of the humanitarian sector who truly understands the importance of language. Over the coming months, we will work together with the TWB and TRF teams to merge operations as required to meet our strategic goals and, most importantly, to strengthen outreach and processes for our highly motivated translator communities.” Olga will be relinquishing her role as executive to become a new TRF board member.
TRF works with translators through the Trommons platform, developed by the Localisation Research Centre at the University of Limerick and exclusively licensed to TRF, who have open-sourced it. TWB has been operating on the ProZ.com powered translation center, which it has recently complemented with state-of-the-art open-source translation technology and CRM functionality to build its unique Kató translation platform. For now, services to partners will continue as normal on both platforms, while some administrative tasks will be merged.
TWB was founded as a United States non-profit in 2010 by Lori Thicke. TRF was founded by Reinhard Schäler during the Action for Global Information Sharing (AGIS) conference in Limerick in 2009. Further details will be communicated to the organizations’ communities over the next six months. Additionally, the organizations have jointly created an FAQ (see below); specific questions can be directed to info@translatorswithoutborders.org or info@therosettafoundation.org.
About Translators without Borders
Translators without Borders (TWB) envisions a world where knowledge knows no language barriers. The US-based non-profit provides people access to vital knowledge in their language by connecting non-profit organizations with a professional community of translators, building local language translation capacity, and raising awareness of language barriers. Originally founded in 1993 in France (as Traducteurs sans Frontières), and with one office now in Kenya, TWB translates millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information a year. In 2013, TWB created the first-ever crisis relief translation service, Words of Relief, which has responded to crises every year since.
About The Rosetta Foundation
Since 2009, The Rosetta Foundation (TRF) has worked to eradicate the knowledge gap based on linguistic discrimination. The organization’s mission is to promote equal access to information to as many underserved communities as possible across the languages of the world in order to relieve poverty, support healthcare, develop education and promote justice. TRF connects 15,000+ volunteer translators from 160 countries, through the Trommons crowdsourcing platform, with 300+ non profit organizations worldwide.
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