Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Refugee Phrasebook: Building an open, multilingual phrasebook for refugees who just arrived.

Published 12/24/2015

Title ideas

• Helping refugees communicate on a brand-new continent: how we built an open-source phrasebook

Summary

A brief, one-paragraph summary of the post's content, about 20-80 words. On the blog, this will be shown in the chronological list of posts or in the featured post carousel on top, next to a "Read more" link.

• Volunteers are building an open collection of useful words and phrases for refugees who just arrived. The Refugee Phrasebook is a multilingual tool that provides basic useful vocabulary related to the most common immediate needs and uses Wikibooks as a platform.

Body

Refugees resting on a bridge between Germany and Austria. Photo by Christian Michelides, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Refugee Phrasebook Refugee Phrasebook Cover by bisnode.hr, freely licensed under CC0.

This is a guest post from the team behind Refugee Phrasebook.

With the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and in Europe, where over a million refugees have and are seeking safe haven in Europe, the need for better communication with and for refugees has become urgent. These refugees are coming into countries like Turkey, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, or Germany with little to no knowledge of the Turkish, Greek, Italian, Slovak, or German languages.

In response, an international group of volunteers started the Refugee Phrasebook in August to collect and translate useful phrases for refugees in more than 30 languages.

The phrasebook catalogs a general set of phrases as well as sentences for juridical and medical needs, from the simple "hello" or "water" to more complex requests like "I need to see a doctor." Requests for more phrases have tripled the total length of the tables in the last four months. Refugees can find them in [number of languages] languages.

All of this has been collected into a single Google Doc, which we have licensed under CC-0—also known as the public domain, so anyone can take the work and reuse or remix it for any purpose, inclusing refugee aid projects all over the world, without fear of copyright infringement.

However, many of the refugees have little access to the Internet or mobile phones, so we've had to print several booklets. Supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, we organized a Wikibooks workshop and printed 10,000 of them in Thessaloniki, Greece, each containing 20 to 40 pages. Local volunteers and OKF Greece helped with distributing them to the Aegean Greek islands, where many of the refugees have ended up.

Meanwhile, Hungarian advertising agency Bisnode used the phrasebook data to create a custom version of their own, eventually printing 100,000 to be distributed at the borders (40,000 in Germany). A Croatian-Slovenian Wikibooks version was promoted on the websites of radio stations and printed by local volunteers on demand, and local versions have been designed at several locations, including a phrasebook made by the Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel.

Several mobile apps have been designed as well, for use when refugees have access to the Internet. Refugee Phrasebook interactive provides data from the tables in a more user-friendly interface, while RefuChat supports refugees, helpers and paramedics with custom sets of phrases. The App InfoAid not only includes the language data, but also helps distribute important information and updates. The web app refugee-phrasebook.github.io presents the data in an accessible format with selectable sets of languages, while other projects are being developed on GitHub.

Where do we go from here? The printing and distribution project is now in its fifth month, and the demand for phrasebooks is still very high. Translations in several languages still have to be completed and checked, a common issue in our feedback is the lack of an Arabic pronunciation guide for non-Arabic languages, which could make it easier for non-native speakers to pronounce words in the languages of their destination countries.

Most of all, we need dedicated workshops with refugee committees to identify the most useful phrases to recommend for printing. Since the language data has been corrected and extended since the first print runs, all existing apps as well as Wikibooks and custom design versions have to be updated. There is a lot to do.

Contact info

Together with Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e. V. (OKFDE), Refugee Phrasebook maintains the website refu­geephrase­book.de, a Wikibooks page, social media accounts (Facebook/ Twitter) and a bank account for donations to support the distribution of printed versions (to ensure transparency, all funding is accounted and reported by the OKFDE; at the end of each year, the unused funds are donated to Doctors without Borders). As this is an open data project, local groups are encouraged to coordinate their own version with refugee initiatives; we try to help organize funding or match volunteers with potential donors.

Markus Neuschäfer, Refugee Phrasebook

Original copy

With the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and in Europe, the need for better communication with and for refugees has become urgent. A few months ago, an international group of volunteers started to collect and translate useful phrases for refugees in more than 30 languages.

Language support with open data

Refugee Phrasebook is an open data project.While the first collection of phrases was still limited to a closed document with a narrow use case, volunteers quickly migrated the data to open tables in Google Docs and significantly increased the number of participants with their network. This step also emphasized a commitment to transparency and openness by publishing the data with a Creative Commons license (CC0), reuseable for refugee aid projects everywhere. Due to translation requests from helpers, the length of the tables has more than tripled since August. The phrases now include a broad range of topics, from a simple “Hello” to “ I need to see a doctor”, covering a general set of phrases as well as sentences for juridical and medical needs.

Together with Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e. V., the support team of the Refugee Phrasebook also maintains the website refu­geephrase­book.de, a Wikibooks page, social media (facebook/ twitter) and a bank account for donations to support the distribution of printed versions. To ensure transparency, all funding is accounted for and reported by OKFDE. At the end of each year the unused funds are donated to Doctors without Borders. Often the support team organizes funding for local versions, or matches volunteers with potential donors. Since this is an open data project, local groups are encouraged to coordinate their own version with refugee initiatives.

As soon as a simple website had been made, the project started to receive a lot of attention. Although interview requests often had to be neglected in favor of producing new print versions, the project was featured in the press very often. Especially in the first stage of the project, we received urgent requests for printable versions for different regions in Europe, all of them along the major refugee transit routes. To quickly produce booklets with a custom set of languages, excerpts of the tables were collated on Wikibook and saved as pdf files. Since the translations were still being added, we had to update these print versions frequently. Often additional content was requested, such as a custom map for the island of Kos in Greece, a map of Europe, icons for fast communication or a warning about landmines in Croatia.

Apps and Print versions: From 0 to >110.000 Booklets in 3 months

Supported by Wikimedia Deutschland, we organized a Wikibooks workshop and printed 10.000 of these Wikibooks-based booklets in Thessaloniki. The booklets were then distributed to Greek islands, mostly in DIN A4 format and with 20-40 pages each. Local volunteers and OKF Greece helped with distribution. In Hungary, the advertising agency Bisnode used the data to create a custom version of their own, and printed 100.000 to be distributed at the borders (40.000 in Germany). The Croatian-Slovenian Wikibooks version was promoted on the websites of radio stations and printed by local volunteers on demand. Local versions have been designed at several locations, including a phrasebook in DIN A6 format made by the Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel. An in-depth description of the challenging design process is provided by the WDKA Publishing station at Willem de Kooning Academy. In November, professional translators from the community Bund deutscher Übersetzer also offered their help on a voluntary basis.

Because the phrasebook is available as open data, developers already use the phrase sets to build applications. Refugee Phrasebook interactive provides data from the tables in a more user-friendly interface, while RefuChat supports refugees, helpers and paramedics with custom sets of phrases. The App InfoAid not only includes the language data, but also helps distribute important information and updates. The web app refugee-phrasebook.github.io presents the data in an accessible format with selectable sets of languages, while other projects are being developed on GitHub.

Next: Improved data, updated versions, better distribution

The printing and distribution project is now in its fifth month, and the demand for phrasebooks is still very high. Translations in several languages still have to be completed and checked, a common issue in our feedback is the lack of an Arabic pronunciation guide for non-Arabic languages, which could make it easier for non-native speakers to pronounce words in the languages of their destination countries. Most of all, we need dedicated workshops with refugee committees to identify the most useful phrases to recommend for printing. Since the language data has been corrected and extended since the first print runs, all existing apps as well as Wikibooks and custom design versions have to be updated. There is a lot to do, and thankfully the community support is still going strong.

Markus Neuschäfer, Refugee Phrasebook