Ellie Kemp of TWB adduces the situation in north-eastern Nigeria. “无国界译员组织”的埃莉·肯普举出尼日利亚东北部的情况。

　　For many of the women there, the word for “widow” is taboo. 对那里的很多女性来说，“寡妇”一词是个忌讳。

　　Instead they must be asked: “Do you have a husband? Did you have one? Is he dead now?” 而要问：“你有丈夫吗？你有一个丈夫吗？现在去世了吗?”

　　Ms Kemp says crisis-responders often don’t know what language expertise they will need. 肯普女士表示，危机应对者通常不知道他们需要什么语言专业知识。

　　They hire “local” workers, assuming that is enough. 他们雇佣“本地”人，以为这就足够了。

　　In Nigeria, these might be educated people who speak only English and Hausa, one of the country’s biggest languages. 在尼日利亚，这些人可能只会说英语和豪萨语（豪萨语是该国最大的语言之一）。

　　But Hausa may be of little use in Borno state, where the insurgency of Boko Haram rages. 但是豪萨语在极端组织“博科圣地”肆虐的博尔诺州可能没有什么用处。

　　If aid workers are lucky, they may find people who know Kanuri, a kind of lingua franca in Borno. 如果幸运的话，救援人员可能会找到懂卡努里语（博尔诺州的一种通用语言）的人。

　　But even that might not help in a state where 28 languages are spoken. 但在一个使用28种语言的州，即便找到也可能无济于事。

　　Higher-status people—often powerful men—may know several languages and act as a bridge. 地位较高的人——通常是有权有势的人——可能懂几种语言并充当桥梁。

　　But aid workers are typically trying to reach the most vulnerable. 但救援人员通常都在努力帮助最脆弱的群体。

　　Ms Kemp notes that in the last Ebola outbreak in west Africa, women were affected worst, because most international advice on prevention came in English and French, which they were less likely to speak. 肯普指出，上次西非爆发的埃博拉疫情中，女性受影响最严重，因为大多数关于预防的国际建议都是用英语和法语提出的，而女性会说英语和法语的几率更小。

　　Some of these problems are intractable. 其中一些问题是难以解决的。

　　But some are not. 但有些则可以解决。

　　Downloadable glossaries (say, between a national and a regional language) can help an aid worker with a smartphone render technical terms in a way locals will understand. 可下载的词汇表(比如，在一种国家语言和一种地区语言之间)可以帮助援助工作者用智能手机以当地人能够理解的方式呈现技术术语。

　　In future, automated translation tools such as Google Translate might extend to lesser-known languages. 未来，自动化的翻译工具如谷歌翻译可能扩展到不太为人所知的语言。

　　That will be difficult: translation software must be trained with a lot of parallel text that has already been translated by humans. 这将是困难的：翻译软件必须通过大量已经被人类翻译过的平行文本进行训练。

　　So TWB is giving some of its language data to companies such as Google and Microsoft for that purpose. 因此，“无国界译员组织”正为此向谷歌和微软等公司提供部分语言数据。

　　Outsiders often think an alien language has “no word for” a concept that is taken for granted in English. 外行人通常会认为一种陌生的语言在英语中“没有对应的词”是理所当然的。

　　These problems are better thought of as cultural rather than linguistic: the words exist, but it is vital to have interpreters who know which can be used and when. 这些问题被认为是文化问题而不是语言问题：英语中虽然有对应的词，但重要的是要有知道在什么场合用什么词的口译员。

　　In a crisis, aid agencies must work quickly; often they can spare their staff for only a day or two’s language training. 在危机中，援助机构必须迅速行动；通常只会让员工接受一两天的语言培训。

　　That is time well spent. 语言培训时间是值得花费的。