Refugee Phrasebook: Building open language tools for newcomers
Kurzthese:
Beschreibung:
We are currently witnessing a humanitarian crisis: People in Syria and other regions are threatened by war, oppression, torture and starvation. They travel thousands of miles in search of safety, hoping for a better life. How can we best welcome newcomers to Europe, help them on their dangerous journey, and foster integration? Refugee Phrasebook is an open collection of useful words and phrases for refugees and helpers. Volunteers from all over the world translated several thousand phrases in up to 30 languages. The data is provided with an open license, including vocabulary for orientation and medical and juridical topics. In 2015, over 110.000 booklets with a pilot set of phrases have been printed and distributed all across Europe. How can we improve the project in 2016? Based on our feedback so far, we discuss our experiences with the current humanitarian crisis and how to better support all newcomers in the next months.