Being a volunteer translator for the UN

Volunteering, just like people, comes in all shapes and sizes, and as I recently found I had some of what I've often heard referred to as "spare capacity", I thought that whilst looking for new clients a great way to keep up my translation skills would be to do some volunteering.

Nowadays it seems like there are so many volunteers that it's not actually always so easy to get any volunteer experience as there are lots of people with fantastic qualifications eager to help most causes, and many causes that have strict criteria for their volunteers.. However, my desire to volunteer led me to discover the UN Volunteer site (UNV) where you can get involved in a whole host of different ways.

I filtered the site to show online translation opportunities and there are generally around 40-50 live at any one time. The great thing is that from the initial view you can quickly pick out your language combinations, and see how much time you would need to be volunteering, e.g. 1-5 hours per week for 3 weeks. For anyone who is familiar with the UN Sustainable Development Goals then you might also like the fact that when you hover over a volunteer opportunity it will flash up with which one of the 17 goals it relates to so you can even volunteer to support the one you find the most important!

After selecting an opportunity that I found interesting I completed a short application form - detailing my skills and the reasons why I wanted to volunteer - in my case the application was for All We Can (previously known as the Methodist Relief & Development Fund). I was very pleased to be accepted a few days later and start discussing the project with the organisation directly. I think that the UNV site is a great way for putting people with the right skills in touch with organisations that need them, and it's a very simple process to go through if you want to do some volunteer work.

After I started discussing the project with the organisation it was actually like working with a regular translation project manager, they were always on hand to answer any questions and encouraged me to highlight anything I was unsure about as the text was sometimes quite complicated. I found this to be a great experience as I also learnt a lot about the social situation in Burundi - where my translation would be used, as well as the organisation itself. The purpose of All We Can is to help people to find solutions to poverty and become all that they can. They do this through advocacy, education, partnerships and relief programs. They hope to create long-lasting change in poor communities and the first text I translated looked at helping women be the key to improving communities and developing self-sufficiency.

I really enjoyed working on the translation and got helpful feedback from the organisation. What is more, a few weeks later the organisation contacted me directly to see if I would be available to help again and I was very pleased to keep working on my skills, as I still had enough "spare capacity" to meet their long deadline. This time, it also gave me a reason to fire up Trados and make a term base, and use the translation memory from the first translation as there were a lot of similar passages. Not only did I get to help a fantastic organisation who I believe would have struggled to pay a translator, I also brushed up my Trados skills at the same time!

So, if you find yourself with some "spare capacity" and want to support the UN's SDGs then take a look at the UNV site and you might just find something that catches your eye and gives you a reason to stay home in your pyjamas - (translating)!