How language problems bedevil the response to crises | THE ECONOMIST

To solve them, interpreters must grasp cultural differences as well as linguistic ones

Sitting on a muddy floor beneath a tarpaulin roof, Nabila, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi, fiddles with her shoelaces as she listens to Tosmida, a Rohingya woman in her mid-30s. Both are crying. Nabila, a student-turned-interpreter, says awkwardly: “She had it from all of them in her secret place.”

The struggle to tell the story of Tosmida’s gang-rape is not just an emotional but a linguistic one…

The Economist | 15th November 2018

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/11/17/how-language-problems-bedevil-the-response-to-crises