A TOTAL of 37 interpreters have been trained by Clare Local Development Community (CLDC) to assist Ukrainian refugees living in the Banner County.
CLDC are running classes to create bilingual interpreters who can help Ukrainians understand the services that are available to them and assist with the day-to-day difficulties of being a non-English language speaker in Ireland.
“Since March there has been a huge intake of Ukrainians into Clare. An awful lot of agencies have been working together to see how we can best support the Ukrainians to settle in and integrate into the communities,” explained Samantha McCarthy who coordinates the programme for CLDC.
It was in this inter-agency collaboration that the idea for training interpreters formed. “While we were chatting, we found out that there was quite a significant amount of people translating for Ukrainian individuals within the accommodation centres. All of our services would come into the accommodation centres to see what the needs of Ukrainians were and how we could support them but, because language is such a barrier, there were people offering their interpretation services on a voluntary basis”.
“We first started to think about how people can protect themselves within that situation because people would be having breakfast, and someone could come over to them and say, ‘I need you to translate something for me’. There were little issues to do with boundaries and personal safety especially when people were coming from such trauma,” she told The Clare Echo.
“We looked to see if we could get someone to give community interpretation training to anyone really that was interpreting in the county, but the reality was it was primarily Ukrainians that stepped forward,” Samnatha said.
CLDC have now trained 37 interpreters, a third of which will now join their community interpreter panel and work as translators professionally.
“The most important thing is that we’re supporting them to, firstly, be able to settle, secondly, recognise the services that are within the county that can support them, and finally, to encourage them to look at their own language needs and then through that The Limerick and Clare Education Centre will have quite a significant number of English language classes,” she said.
With the success of the initiative CLDC hope to expand the service to give training to those interpreting for other marginalised communities later in the year and Translate, the agency CLDC partnered with to deliver the service, now plan to bring the classes nationwide.
Those interested in the training can visit cldc.ie for more information or contact Samantha to be added to the waiting list.
