Thanks to the initiative of Alexandra Mendez, an Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellow with the Global Language Justice initiative at Columbia University’s Institute for Comparative Language and Society (ICLS), as well as Prof. Anupama Rao, the latter’s Acting Director, Red T’s founder presented a one-week pedagogical module as part of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar in Global Language Justice conducted by ICLS. The module’s virgin run was incorporated into the 2019 spring semester of Dr. Isabelle Zaugg’s class “Global Language Justice in the Digital Sphere.”

According to the syllabus prepared by Ms. Mendez: “The purpose of this module is for students to learn about linguists’ rights and data gathering and analysis in the digital sphere, as well as contribute actively to a project of advocacy for the protection of translators and interpreters in crisis settings. The precise learning objectives will vary from course to course, and may include learning to view historically fraught instances of translation through a new lens.”

The students were assigned to contribute 1-2 detailed entries to Red T’s database of translator/interpreter incidents. They digitally scoured the world and located/researched various linguist persecutions. It was inspiring to witness their commitment and we look forward to future modules that will be instrumental in building our database. We thank Dr. Zaugg for hosting Red T.

For more information on the Global Language Justice Initiative, please visit:

https://languagejustice.wordpress.com and http://icls.columbia.edu