INMIGRA3: building a case for NGOs and NMT

INMIGRA3: building a case for NGOs and NMT Celia Rico* Universidad Europea de Madrid María del Mar Sánchez Ramos** Universidad de Alcalá Antoni Oliver*** Universitat Oberta de Catalunya *celia.rico@universidadeuropea.es **mar.sanchezr@uah.es ***aoliverg@uoc.edu Abstract INMIGRA3 is a three-year project that builds on the work of two previous initia- tives: INMIGRA2-CM1 and CRISIS-MT2. Together, they address the specific needs of NGOs in multilingual settings with a particular interest in migratory contexts. Work on INMIGRA3 concentrates in the analysis of how to use NMT for the pur- poses of translating NGOs documenta- tion. 1 Translation needs of non- governmental organisations The third sector is experiencing an increasing relevance as the number of people in vulnerable circumstances grows. Natural catastrophes, wars, political and religious persecutions, or economic crisis are some of the conditions that leave people unprotected. These are situations that pose a challenge as complex linguistic situations arise (Federici and O’Brien, 2020). And migration flows are not an exception. Previous research has revealed a series of gaps still to be filled if we are to understand the true nature of multilingual needs in not-for-profit settings. For instance, which are their working conditions as related to multilingual needs? How technology can be best put to use? (see, for 1 The work of INMIGRA2-CM was presented at EAMT 2017: https://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/eamt2017/user-project- product-papers/Conference_Booklet_EAMT2017.pdf 2 CRISIS-MT is a project funded by Universidad de Alcalá (CCG2018/HUM-043). Among other objectives, it aims at designing an MT system that can be easily put to use in multilingual crisis communication. instance, the work of INTERACT project 3 , Language on the Move4 or Translators without Borders5). In the case of NGOs working in the migratory context, one the main issues is that usually the budget allocated to translation resources is scarce or non-existent. This might explain why catering for the multilingual needs of migrant population is not considered among their core activities —at least in the minds of official donors (Footitt, Crack and Tesseur, 2018). Consequently, translation is mostly conducted as volunteer work and using ad hoc materials and tools. In the case of MT, volunteers mostly use free online engines (Rico, 2020). This involves a high risk when dealing with confidential and personal data such as donors’ information, reports to official bodies regarding field actions or personal documentation from most vulnerable people. 2 Building a case for the use of neural machine translation INMIGRA3 aims at building a case for the use of NMT for the specific translation needs of NGOs. This involves an experimental setting along the following lines:  The participation of two NGOs working with migrant people and refugees in Spain: Cáritas Española6 and the Spanish Committee for Refugee Help (CEAR)7. 3 INTERACT website: https://sites.google.com/view/crisistranslation/home?authus er=0 4 Language on the move website: https://www.languageonthemove.com/ 5 TWB website: https://translatorswithoutborders.org/ 6 Cáritas Española is the Spanish chapter of Caritas Interna- tionalis, a not-for-profit organization associated to the Ro- man Catholic Church. 7 CEAR’s website: https://www.cear.es/  Definition of a use-case scenario according to the specific needs of the two NGOs participating in …

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