Language Matters – The Inside Track

The Rosetta Foundation can report some exciting new developments. Last September, we launched the €100,000 Social Localisation Initiative on the replica of the famous Jeanie Johnston tall ship in Dublin harbour. Volunteers, representatives of partner organisations, funders and supporters joined us to celebrate the remarkable achievements of our young organisation, and to launch the next step in our development.

The impact of our work became very real when we heard from the Community Eye Health Journal and Vision 2020 about how our translations now make knowledge about eye health care more accessible to health carers in Africa. We heard how girls and young women can now learn about gender equality and women’s health issues thanks to our work for the 10-million-member-strong World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), and how adults and children with intellectual disabilities can now better prepare for the Special Olympics because of the work of our volunteers.

As The Rosetta Foundation’s activities are developing, we recognise the need for a central hub that can provide a solid framework of support for our volunteers and partner organisations. This is why earlier in the year we decided to employ a Production and Operations Manager, as well as a Community and Communications Coordinator. Paulina Abzieher joined us in April to help us communicate better with our volunteers and partner organisations, and to become the voice of The Rosetta Foundation. In May, our team doubled with Diane Kennedy joining us as Production and Operations Manager. Through our collaboration with the Leonardo Programme, Raquel Ligero was able to join us for three months to kick start our monthly newsletter and to produce a series of videos with partner organisations and funders. We will continue this highly successful collaboration with the Leonardo Programme at least until the end of 2012. Interns from UCD’s Department of Computer Science and from DCU’s School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies have joined this core team for the summer months.

In parallel with the development of our core team, we have increased our collaboration with the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) and the Localisation Research Centre (LRC) at the University of Limerick. The Rosetta Foundation became a partner in CNGL II and will collaborate closely with the University of Limerick’s MSc in Multilingual Computing and Localisation, which will be offered as a distance learning programme from September of this year. We are piloting SOLAS Match, an easy-to-use automatic matching site for volunteers to pick up suitable projects, and will soon have a first version of the SOLAS Match Mobile App available.

We have also engaged with some of the industry’s best-known leaders to develop our approach and strategy, among them representatives of the Globalization and Localization Association, the world’s largest industry association, and individual professionals, including Thomas Arendt (Twitter) and Allen Gunn (Aspiration Technologies). As a result, we will increase our efforts matching projects for underserved content and languages with volunteer translators, and identifying social-enterprise-focused development projects, which we will mentor for a period of up to twelve months until they begin to yield social dividends.

I invite you to read on, find out what motivates our volunteers, our partner organisations, our funders, and our staff – and perhaps consider supporting our work!

Language matters. So does your support. Contact us: info@therosettafoundation.org

Reinhard Schäler