Language for Justice
Breaking down language barriers to dismantle systemic inequity.
✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
An OGA project
Language as a bridge, not a barrier
Language for Justice (LFJ) is OGA’s language access project. We connect professional interpreters and multilingual talent with initiatives working for social and environmental justice.
We prioritize multilingual people from the Global Majority, BIPOC, refugee, migrant and other historically underrepresented communities, through training, mentorship, recommendations and real opportunities to practice. We are a small team of volunteers, and for us language work is connection, preservation and resistance, never extraction.
What we do
Three ways we work
📚 Training
A free, six-week online introduction to interpreting, translation and professional autonomy, grounded in decolonial practice and open to people from Global Majority countries.
🤝🏾 Community and mentorship
After the course, trainees stay in the network, with peer support, mentor matching when volunteers are available, CV and LinkedIn guidance and shared opportunities.
🎧 Interpreting for justice
Our network supports grassroots and social-impact events, such as the premiere of Flowers of the Earth, with Guarani-Kaiowá leaders, and SILA, a documentary on Inuit women in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland).
In numbers
A growing network
500+
linguists in the Language for Justice network
11
interpreters certified in our first cohort, in 2025
189
applications from 56 countries for our second cohort, in 2026
47
trainees selected for the second cohort
Figures from OGA’s own records, October 2026.
Cohorts
Our path so far
2025
Cohort 1
Our first cohort, with 30+ applications, trained Palestinian interpreters. Eleven were certified, and we share their stories in the Meet our Palestinian Talents series.
2026
Cohort 2
A free, six-week online program from August to September, with trainees from across Global Majority countries. We share their journeys in the Cohort 2 Talent Series.
2027
Cohort 3
Cohorts run every year, and the third one runs online from July to August 2027. Write to us if you would like to join or support it.
Talent stories
The people behind the network
Our trainees and graduates share their journeys in their own words on our LinkedIn page.
Cohort 2 Talent Series 🌍
Erangi Bandara
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka, a nation that refused to give up.
Rolando Murga
🇬🇹 Guatemala: finding my way through languages.
Kodjo Adogli
🇹🇬 Togo: language, identity and the stories we carry.
Cohort 1: Meet our Palestinian Talents 🇵🇸
Stories from the interpreters and translators of our first cohort.
Listen
Cohort 2 playlist
Songs from the countries and cultures of our Cohort 2 trainees and trainers, chosen by them.
33 tracks, about six hours of music to travel with.
Listen on Mixider →Causes
Some of the projects we have supported
Reading support for girls in Syrian refugee camps
Volunteer Arabic ↔ English interpreting for the Q&A after a global film screening with Syrian humanitarian Asmaa Rashed, who supports reading programs for girls.
Refugee and Global Majority voices in poetry
Interpreting at a poetry gathering by the Rawanee collective, with refugee and Global Majority voices. Interpreted by Josephina Birmato, from our network, from South Sudan 🇸🇸.
Taqat Heroes
Donation of three tablets to orphaned children, through Permaculture & Palestine (PePa).
Bioremediation of war contamination
Volunteer English to Arabic and Ukrainian interpreting for a free online agroecology course from a US institute, January to March 2026, for war-affected communities in Palestine 🇵🇸, Ukraine 🇺🇦 and their diasporas.
Lithium extraction in Latin America
Volunteer Spanish to English interpreting for a webinar on direct lithium extraction in Chile 🇨🇱, supporting communities in their territorial struggles.
Family Doctors Initiative, Gaza
Spanish translation and revision for an interview with Dr. Salam Khashan, who leads the Family Doctors Initiative, on Cadena SER (Radio Madrid) in August 2025, and a volunteer French translation of the initiative’s report on its medical work in Gaza 🇵🇸, to share with French-speaking partners.
Flowers of the Earth and SILA, with SAND
Interpreting for Science and Nonduality events with Guarani-Kaiowá leaders and Inuit women from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Other events with SAND include the session with our partner Ashira Darwish, featured in Where Olive Trees Weep, in December 2025.
All We Have Is Us, with Red Leaves Films
Pro bono subtitles and SDH in 9 languages for the documentary by Aline Juárez and Juan Francisco Donoso about communities defending their territories.
Permaculture & Palestine (PePa)
Interpreting into Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic and English for a series of calls with Permaculture & Palestine (PePa), a partnership built through Alfred Decker, including From Lebanon, With Love: A Regenerative Conversation in Times of War.
Ashira Darwish
An educational live session with our partner Ashira Darwish, open to the community, on how to support people living through trauma.
Watch
From our YouTube channel
Recommended videos
Ask the Trainers
Short videos where our trainers answer questions from Cohort 2 trainees.
Follow along
On our Instagram
Behind the scenes, calls for interpreters and stories from our network.
Collaborate with us
Let’s build language justice together
Running a grassroots initiative, organizing a justice event or want to join the network as an interpreter? Write to us and let’s find a way to work together.
