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The mission of Translators without Borders is to provide people access to vital knowledge in their language through translation, training of translators, building translation capacity in underserved languages, and raising awareness globally of language barriers.

Contract length: one year, with the possibility of extension
Hours: Full-time
Location: Maiduguri, Nigeria

Travel: occasional short travels to field locations

About Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders (TWB) envisions a world where knowledge knows no language barriers. The US-registered non-profit provides people access to vital knowledge in their language by connecting non-profit organizations with a professional community of translators, building local language translation capacity, and raising awareness of language barriers. Originally founded in 1993 in France (as Traducteurs sans Frontières), TWB translates millions of words of life-saving and life-changing information a year.

Background

TWB conducted an initial assessment of language support needs in the humanitarian response in north-east Nigeria in July 2017. This found very significant levels of need: in a context where people affected by the conflict and food crisis speaker’s dozens of first languages, humanitarian communication is overwhelmingly in English and Hausa. Organizations lack basic information about the languages spoken and understood by affected people, and struggle to hire either language professionals or national staff and volunteers with the right language skills. Humanitarian staff voiced fears for the impact this could have on the accuracy of needs assessments, the effectiveness of program design, accountability, and conflict sensitivity. So far TWB has developed a protection, mental health and psychosocial support and camp coordination and camp management glossary apps, conducted comprehension testing with IDPs, enumerators, and field staff, worked with partners on collecting and mapping language data, carried out trainings on the basics of interpreting and is piloting a multilingual feedback mechanism.

There is still much to do to fully understand how language barriers affect data collection, two way communication between crisis affected people and humanitarian agencies, and access to services. The research planned over the coming months includes better understanding the impact of language on service accessibility, the effectiveness and limitations of multi-lingual audio messaging, and the relevance of language in enabling crisis affected people to express their needs.

Reporting to: Country Director

The Role

The AAP Specialist is responsible for designing, constantly adapting and implementing TWB’s innovative strategy of Accountability to Affected Population and Communication with Communities. The AAP Specialist will oversee the timely and effective identification, planning and delivery of activities. The AAP Specialist manages the AAP Officer and Protection Officer.

Responsibilities

Design, implementation and monitoring of AAP / PSEA / CwC activities

• Develop mutually beneficial AAP / PSEA / CwC partnerships/projects with humanitarian agencies to provide them with language services and advice and liaise with all concerned (including internally) to ensure timely high-quality delivery.
• Coordinate TWB’s engagement in multilingual feedback mechanism by overseeing the AAP / PSEA communication, transcription and translation of complaints and communication of feedback to communities, including overseeing the technical side of feedback mechanism (through audio recorders, hotlines, internet-in-a-box).
• Contribute to developing, revising and adapting proposals.
• Coordinate the daily management, ensure delivery and monitoring of all activities agreed with partners and donors. This will include liaising with specialized global team (translation team, editor, tech team, etc…) for the activities under the AAP Specialist’s direct responsibility, producing CWCs outputs (written, audiovisual, etc).

Human resources management

• Recruit, manage and coach the team of AAP, CwC and Protection staff.
• Maintain open and professional relationships with the internal TWB team, TWB volunteers, partner agencies and donors.
• Contribute to a positive, innovative and supportive work environment.

Humanitarian liaison and coordination

• Liaise with all partners and stakeholders on AAP / PSEA / CwC efforts,
• Actively participate in AAP/CwC working sub-group, ad-hoc meetings and initiatives
• Liaise with organizations to ensure that language is factored in with TWB’s support.

Reporting

• Provide TWB’s contribution to the programme updates and other required reports.
• Document project activities.
• Ensure TWB complies with donor reporting requirements, including writing narrative reports and working with the finance team to prepare financial reports.

Qualifications

The AAP Specialist should be a creative self-starter with a strong sense of initiative, experienced in AAP / PSEA / CwC humanitarian programming and enthusiastic about the importance of increasing access to information through language. The right candidate is an energetic team player who agrees with TWB´s basic beliefs and values and who can work virtually with team members based throughout the world.

Requirements

• Relevant university degree
• 4+ years of project design and management experience, with at least 2 years in the humanitarian sector
• Demonstrated experience of AAP / PSEA / CwC work at field level
• International humanitarian experience
• Demonstrated listening and advising skills
• Excellent writing and presentation skills in English
• Representation and coordination experience a plus
• Demonstrated experience of leading and managing high performing program teams a plus
• Media production experience a plus
• Training or research skills and experience a plus
• Interpreting or translation experience a plus

Core Values

Translators without Borders employees and volunteers are made of people who believe passionately about the value of this work and take personal responsibility for achieving the mission. Translators without Borders’ mission and organizational spirit embody the core values established in its strategic framework:

Excellence: As the leading voice for communicating humanitarian information in the right language, Translators without Borders is a leader in the translation industry and in the non-profit sector.

Integrity: Translators without Borders believes that every person, whether it is the people who we serve, our volunteers or our staff, has value, deserves respect and has inherent dignity.

Empowerment: Translators without Borders believes in using language to empower people around the world to control their own development and destiny.

Innovation: Translators without Borders recognizes and celebrates the power of innovation to address humanitarian and crisis issues around the world.

Sustainability: Translators without Borders recognizes that meeting our mission necessitates establishment and maintenance of a solid financial and organizational infrastructure.

Tolerance: Our staff and volunteers are highly knowledgeable and skilled; value each other, our partner and our recipients; create a supportive work environment; and, conduct themselves professionally at all times.

Translators without Borders is an equal-opportunity employer, committed to diversity and inclusion, and encourages qualified candidates of all genders and from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organization.