Last week, NYU SPS Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts had the exciting opportunity to host the first ever Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) Roadshow, a conference which focused on language accessibility and inclusion from the language professional’s perspective. The event featured presentations by the New York State Office of Language Access, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, Eriksen Translations, the Endangered Language Alliance, and NYU SPS faculty. As a student of Translation & Interpreting here at NYU, I was very fortunate to be given the opportunity to help out and attend, so I wanted to share my thoughts on the conference.
I was very impressed by the level of knowledge, attention to detail, and insight brought by all of the presenters. The speakers from the New York State Office of Language Access informed us that Queens is the most linguistically diverse place in the world, and that about half the population of New York City speaks a language other than English at home. In fact, 60% of New Yorkers are immigrants or children of immigrants. Millions of people who bring their different language and cultures with them. This left me feeling very proud of this city – yet another reason why New York is the most interesting city on Earth, in my opinion. It is also a reason for the important work the state and city are doing to ensure that all New Yorkers have equal access to important content in their language. By law, New York State agencies must offer free interpretation services to the person receiving services or benefits in their primary language, including American Sign Language (ASL). Language services are needed now more than ever to continue to make the city more inclusive, culturally rich and diverse. Personally, I feel that other cities and states should follow New York’s example.
Kenneth Lo from the NYC Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs raised a lot of interesting questions about the linguistic infrastructure of our city which have left me thinking: how can we co-design the future of language access? How can we use AI to our advantage while making it more representative and less biased? How can we build capacity for low-resource languages? How can we get more of our young bilinguals interested in the language service industry?
Some of these questions were addressed in the Q&A with Ross Perlin, an accomplished linguist and the author of the new book “Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York.” Ross shared his insights on the world’s many endangered languages and how some of their last surviving speakers have formed communities right here in New York. The book seems truly fascinating and I cannot wait to read it.
Post-presentation networking with all of the language professionals was very fun! Everyone was super warm and friendly. All of our different backgrounds led to some very interesting conversations about the industry and language. I was also thrilled to meet Vigdis Eriksen, the founder and CEO of one of the most successful translation firms (Eriksen Translations), who also helped to organize the conference. Having started the company from scratch in Brooklyn in the 80’s, her leadership is something which I greatly admire.
I left feeling quite optimistic and inspired, with new perspectives on language and language access in NYC which I had previously not considered.
