Today, on International Translation Day, we are celebrating the vital role that the translation services have played during the COVID-19 pandemic in upholding multilingualism at the United Nations, a core value of our Organization.
The close to 900 staff members who make up those services across the Secretariat have always been the guardians of multilateral diplomacy. This year, their role was more essential than ever!
When mandatory telecommuting was imposed, the Secretariat’s translation services transitioned to fully remote operations without skipping a beat. Thanks to their resourcefulness and flexibility, staff members quickly adapted to an unprecedented situation, taking full advantage of the suite of web-based tools (gDoc, eLUNa and UNTERM) for managing workflow and producing multilingual documentation that they had already developed in-house and implemented across the four main conference-servicing duty stations: New York, Geneva, Nairobi and Vienna.
Of course, working remotely in exceptionally stressful circumstances and in less-than-ideal physical environments raised new challenges and concerns. Nevertheless, thanks to their extraordinary dedication, translators – together with editorial and desktop publishing assistants and editors – have continued to deliver high-quality documentation in all six official languages, despite the particularly trying times and the capacity shortfalls generated by the liquidity crisis.
Few of us pause to consider how much intellectual, organizational and technical effort goes into processing the almost 250 million words received for translation each year, to produce the documents that inform, guide and record the work of the Organization.
Translators are of multilateral diplomacy. Working behind the scenes, their invisibility is the very measure of their success.
Today, let’s put them in the spotlight. Happy International Translation Day!
International Translation Day was established by the General Assembly in its resolution , in recognition of the role of translators “in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development”.
