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These problems are far from unique to the Rohingyas. Ellie Kemp of TWB adduces the situation in north-eastern Nigeria. For many of the women there, the word for “widow” is taboo. Instead they must be asked: “Do you have a husband? Did you have one? Is he dead now?”
這些問題遠不是羅辛亞族人獨有的。“無國界譯員組織”的埃莉·肯普舉出尼日利亞東北部的情況。對那里的很多女性來說，“寡婦”一詞是個忌諱。而要問：“你有丈夫嗎？你有一個丈夫嗎？現在去世了嗎?”
Ms Kemp says crisis-responders often don’t know what language expertise they will need. They hire “local” workers, assuming that is enough. In Nigeria, these might be educated people who speak only English and Hausa, one of the country’s biggest languages. But Hausa may be of little use in Borno state, where the insurgency of Boko Haram rages. If aid workers are lucky, they may find people who know Kanuri, a kind of lingua franca in Borno. But even that might not help in a state where 28 languages are spoken.
肯普女士表示，危機應對者通常不知道他們需要什么語言專業知識。他們雇傭“本地”人，以為這就足夠了。在尼日利亞，這些人可能只會說英語和豪薩語（豪薩語是該國最大的語言之一）。但是豪薩語在極端組織“博科圣地”肆虐的博爾諾州可能沒有什么用處。如果幸運的話，救援人員可能會找到懂卡努里語（博爾諾州的一種通用語言）的人。但在一個使用28種語言的州，即便找到也可能無濟于事。
Higher-status people—often powerful men—may know several languages and act as a bridge. But aid workers are typically trying to reach the most vulnerable. Ms Kemp notes that in the last Ebola outbreak in west Africa, women were affected worst, because most international advice on prevention came in English and French, which they were less likely to speak.
地位較高的人——通常是有權有勢的人——可能懂幾種語言并充當橋梁。但救援人員通常都在努力幫助最脆弱的群體。肯普指出，上次西非爆發的埃博拉疫情中，女性受影響最嚴重，因為大多數關于預防的國際建議都是用英語和法語提出的，而女性會說英語和法語的幾率更小。
Some of these problems are intractable. But some are not. Downloadable glossaries (say, between a national and a regional language) can help an aid worker with a smartphone render technical terms in a way locals will understand. In future, automated translation tools such as Google Translate might extend to lesser-known languages. That will be difficult: translation software must be trained with a lot of parallel text that has already been translated by humans. So TWB is giving some of its language data to companies such as Google and Microsoft for that purpose.
其中一些問題是難以解決的。但有些則可以解決。可下載的詞匯表(比如，在一種國家語言和一種地區語言之間)可以幫助援助工作者用智能手機以當地人能夠理解的方式呈現技術術語。未來，自動化的翻譯工具如谷歌翻譯可能擴展到不太為人所知的語言。這將是困難的：翻譯軟件必須通過大量已經被人類翻譯過的平行文本進行訓練。因此，“無國界譯員組織”正為此向谷歌和微軟等公司提供部分語言數據。
Outsiders often think an alien language has “no word for” a concept that is taken for granted in English. These problems are better thought of as cultural rather than linguistic: the words exist, but it is vital to have interpreters who know which can be used and when. In a crisis, aid agencies must work quickly; often they can spare their staff for only a day or two’s language training. That is time well spent.
外行人通常會認為一種陌生的語言在英語中“沒有對應的詞”是理所當然的。這些問題被認為是文化問題而不是語言問題：英語中雖然有對應的詞，但重要的是要有知道在什么場合用什么詞的口譯員。在危機中，援助機構必須迅速行動；通常只會讓員工接受一兩天的語言培訓。語言培訓時間是值得花費的。
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