South Asia Solidarity Interpreting Collective

Hannah Carlan (Punjabi 2017), Laura Valencia (Hindi 2011) and several other colleagues founded the South Asia Solidarity Interpreting (SASI) Collective in 2019 to further language justice in South Asia through increasing representation of linguistic diversity in South Asian organizations when it comes to interpreting. Given the immense linguistic diversity in South Asia, organizations frequently need to operate in multilingual contexts, but limited resources often mean defaulting to a dominant language, limiting participation of non-dominant language speakers.

The SASI Collective sought to address this gap by publishing a language inclusion handbook geared toward grassroots interpreters, social movements, and interpreting trainers. It includes interpreting modules by professional interpreters and technical know-how about low-budget technology and event planning as well as case studies authored by SASI group members. When the pandemic began, they decided to create a website to present the information developed for the handbook to reach wider audiences. On the website, content is organized into modules related to the philosophy and practice of solidarity interpreting, including training exercises that can be used to help other organizations train their own members in interpretation. Their work has been informed by best practices designed by collectives and scholars in Europe, Latin America, and the United States and localized to the context of South Asia.

“We hope that the activities we plan to conduct in the coming year through the SASI collective’s newly established online platform and digital meeting capabilities will allow us to contribute to this task of increasing language inclusion in South Asian social movement spaces in the era of digital organizing.”