Knowledge is power and language barriers cost lives. Having access to information in your mother tongue is much more effective than in a foreign language. Facilitating the success of humanitarian projects all over the world, Translators without Borders provides a vital service.

ATC organises an annual dinner in aid of this non-profit organization: this year it takes place at the Bloomsbury Hotel, 16-22 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3NN on Thursday, 22nd September.

Translators without Borders is the American sister organisation of non-profit Traducteurs sans Frontières (TSF), which was founded in 1993 by Lori Thicke and Ros Smith-Thomas. Translators without Borders provides a much needed translation service for NGOs such as Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), Médecins du Monde, Action Against Hunger, Oxfam US and Handicap International. Its professional translators aim at breaking down the barriers of language and building up the transfer of information by for example, helping to carry out engineering and construction projects (such as digging water wells), and agricultural projects (such as translating information on how to irrigate the land). Translation is also particularly important in healthcare. In many areas in the world people do not only die from diseases, but also from the fact that they do not have basic information about how to stay healthy and what to do to prevent the contraction and spread of disease.

The members of Translators Without Borders translate more than two million words per year, but this does not even meet 1% of the total need. By developing an open digital platform and establishing new organisational infrastructure, the NGO hopes to increase this to 10 million words or more every year. They have a noble mission: to increase access to knowledge through humanitarian translations.