Recently, I watched a discussion in streaming of expert translators during the Translating Europe Forum Bruxelles 2022. It was about accessibility and the panellists underlined the importance to make contents accessible to visually or hearing-impaired people. If you are asking yourself, what the connection between translation and accessibility is, don’t worry. Gian Maria Greco, professor of inclusivity at the University of Macerata (Italy) and expert in Translation explained it plain and simple: “Accessibility is one of the keys to interpreting the concept of translation”, he said. According to this statement, Amalie Foss, freelance translator and president of the association Audiovisual Translators Europe, declared that accessibility is the main goal for workers in the subtitling industry, stressing again the strict link of these two fields.

This is the perfect summary of what translation means to me and I believe to many colleagues and experts of our discipline too. Making contents accessible is just what drives me most to be a translator –– in brief, my mission. Indeed, when I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the workshop of translation from standard German into Leichte Sprache (en.: German language easy to read) at University, I remember having noticed no substantial difference in comparison with interlingual translations.

I would like to thank Professor Gian Maria Greco and Translator Amalie Foss for having highlighted the very strict connection between translation and accessibility in such an important occasion. I know, this notion could appear to many people a true revelation… as it happened to me many times at the University, when I learnt those tacit and eye-opening truisms. They made me elaborate future awareness and increase in me, day by day, the love for translation. I must thank my university too, more precisely the department FTSK in Germersheim, for having presented to me the noblest aspects of our discipline.

*The Leichte Sprache, like the Easy English introduced by the Australian Government, is an official version of the German language used in institutional and public service websites, to make the important information, written in the complicated bureaucracy language, accessible for a larger public.

Sources:
https://2022tef.b2match.io/components/25343
https://leichte-sprache.de/
https://www.advocacyforinclusion.org/easy-english-resources/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdsVisUz6E&list=PLLqIRaiVCGCSrlTMx1iG1pRlyYR1ZKSyi&index=6