As a member of the New England Translators Association (NETA), I, Helen Eby, have joined the NETA Green Wave Team. This message is posted on behalf of Laura Rojo Macleod, the team leader and author of this message.
This year, Earth Day 2022 calls on everyone to divest from unsustainable investments; support eco-conscious brands and products; and to use your own skills and voice to fight climate change.
As we celebrate International Earth Day on April 22, translators and interpreters can certainly draw special environmental resemblances with our art and task. The original and target text, as a rich language compound, mirrors the planet rich in planetary biodiversity; the language professionals, as every living organism in Nature, are key players in their own ecosystems.
The overarching, unparalleled, receptive skills of comprehensive reading, listening and understanding, we use to deal with any piece of discourse, can indeed be used to finesse how we ‘read’ Nature. The expert word worker is able to put to use a display of comprehensive skills when tackling the material to be rendered. This enhanced, insightful capacity also opens up our ability to take in nature’s alive dimensionality in full.
Here’s our urgent call to reaffirm our commitments to protect Mother Earth, in particular, a call to decision makers at all levels. The UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda calls on all people, namely decision makers, to be active participants for the planet. Together, as engaged language professionals, can add some environmental awareness working with civil society, the private sector, academia, and the media, to truly help restore our Earth, one way or another, for ourselves and the next generations.
We urgently encourage you to join your local climate crisis advocacy associations. Look for updates in the NETA newsletter. We invite language associations to join in the ‘green’ effort as well!
Happy Earth Day!
The NETA Green Wave team
