100+ Cases in 80 Days

Feb 6

Joining Respond during the transition to the Trump Administration

When I graduated from my Masters in Conference Interpreting and Translation Studies last year, I soon realised that getting professional translation experience in the real world was a lot more difficult than many of us on the course had anticipated. In-house roles are few and far between these days, especially in the UK, and freelancing with no substantial professional experience seemed doomed to fail. I therefore decided to start looking for volunteer opportunities to help me develop my skills and hopefully contribute to an important social cause in the meantime. After searching for a little while, my partner sent me a link to Respond Crisis Translation’s website. I read a bit about Respond’s origins, mission and work, and decided to sign up as a Spanish-English volunteer translator in late October 2024.

After I passed the screening test, I took on my first case: a dense, specialised, six-page legal document from Colombia with a turnaround time of three days. This was certainly a challenge for my first assignment, and required a fair amount of research, editing and proofreading. I eventually sent it off, the project manager proofread it, and it was submitted as evidence in an individual’s asylum case. Not long after, the PM on the case, who is also one of the co-Team Leads on Spanish, asked me if I would be interested in joining the team as a Volunteer Project Manager. After some discussion, I said yes. This was on election day in November 2024.

After that, the team got started right away on responding to the needs of individuals and organisations who were preparing for the shift to Trump’s administration. We started to see more projects from individuals trying to apply for forms of immigration relief that might become obsolete. We responded by translating over 1,500 pages and logging over 100 interpretation hours on the Spanish team alone since I started.

At the time of writing, my journey with Respond started around 85 days ago. Since then, I have managed a whopping 128 cases (and translated a further 34, equating to almost 160 pages). These cases have included everything from personal documents to court documents for asylum claims, Know Your Rights texts, simultaneous and consecutive interpretation sessions and multilingual projects where I represented the Spanish team on projects submitted for translation into multiple languages offered by Respond. The Team Leads have coached and instructed me on how Respond’s project management system works, how to create quotes, liaise with requesters and clients, proofread translations, screen potential translators, and overall, contribute to ensuring that Respond is able to help as many people as possible access their language rights, a mission that has become all the more vital under the new administration.

In the couple of months that have passed since I started, I have also gotten involved with some other opportunities at Respond. I have been part-responsible for the creation of our English Conversation Club, allowing members of many different language teams to come together once a week and practice their English. I help facilitate these discussions, ensuring that everyone has a chance to practice and that the sessions run smoothly. A similar Conversation Club has been run in Spanish, and although I am not a native speaker, I have stepped in on occasions where a facilitator was not present to run these sessions spontaneously! I also recently completed my interpreter screening, and am now fully approved to interpret between Spanish and English for Respond, which is something I really look forward to getting involved in.

Overall, the past few months have been a real whirlwind of learning opportunities, responsibilities, challenges and accomplishments for me. I have discovered a proper love (and skill, if I do say so myself) for project management, and have thoroughly enjoyed developing this ability to a level where I can confidently say that I am able to take on almost any case that comes through at Respond. Not to mention, the hands-on translation experience I have gained here has been invaluable. Working at Respond has undoubtedly made me a better, more confident translator.

And, most importantly, all of the above has allowed me to better serve the people that need us at Respond, now more than ever. Having the ability to contribute to people’s access to rights in a meaningful way is the best part of volunteering here. Every case we manage or translate has a real, tangible impact on someone’s story, whether this be an asylum claim, a medical appointment, a court case, an ID application, or any of the many other reasons people come to us. The efforts made by Respond’s network of volunteers, and contributions such as my own, would not be possible without the support of the Team Leads, our partner organisations, and our donors.

Looking to the future, I am sure that 2025 will be a crucial year for language rights activism, and I look forward to continuing my journey with Respond. I know that our work is more important now than ever, and we will continue fighting for language justice every day on the Spanish Team.