2010 was a fantastic year for Conflict Voices, a personal project seeking to amplify alternative voices and opinion on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh. It’s resulted in group discussions on the role of traditional and new media in conflict reporting in Santiago, Chile, participation in a panel at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington D.C., and presentations at numerous events and conferences from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Vienna, Austria. In short, it’s been a huge success and not least because, unfunded and unsupported, it’s a genuine grassroots initiative, which is unprecedented enough in the context of the conflict. However, perhaps another reason for its success was accidental and unintentional. 

Ironically, and although initially intended to be available only in English, the project has taken on a life of its own and, thanks to volunteer efforts, become multi-lingual. Of course, the core language is English, and not least because all of those contributing guest posts for the project are fluent in that, but, as I mentioned as a potential obstacle in the use of social media in cross-border communication, such people are a minority in their respective societies. Therefore, sooner or later, it is impossible to avoid the inevitable.  In a region where Russian is the lingua-franca and few people speak English, no cross border project is going to succeed unless it communicates in a language that the majority understands.

In practice, such logic is sound. Two of the most popular guest entries for Conflict Voices, for example, were originally written in English before being translated. The most successful was by Armenian student activist Marine Ejuryan and, after being voluntarily translated into Azerbaijani, was spread widely on Facebook and also cross-posted on a few Azerbaijani blogs and forums. Hits from Azerbaijan sky-rocketed as a result, while a post by ethnic Azeri refugee Zamira Abbasova touched many people in Armenia, especially when translated into Armenian and Russian. Now, thanks to one very dedicated volunteer in particular, most of the project is available in Russian and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijani as a result.

Translations in Armenian are significantly fewer, unfortunately, but the availability of nearly every post in Russian, a language both Armenians and Azerbaijanis understand, counters that to some extent. Admittedly, however, this does limit its accessibility in Armenian Diaspora communities outside of Armenia, the United States and Russia. Regardless, when you consider that there are four main languages spoken in the region, each with their own alphabet, only one – Russian – is mutually comprehensible in the context of Armenia and Azerbaijan. English, perhaps, is most useful for a mainly Western-based audience and a new generation of Western-leaning activists, albeit a minority, inside the two countries.

Of course, some argue that translation is unnecessary. Firstly, they say, it requires money, and secondly, most of those people interested in cross-border communication and cooperation speak English. True, to some extent at least, but a question naturally has to be asked. Does targeting those already interested in peace change anything in their wider societies? Indeed, this point was considered in a recent conversation about my project, and in particular an e-book compilation of posts in English which should be available in Russian later this month, with Arpine Porsughyan, co-author of a report on the impact of media bias in Armenia and Azerbaijan for the Caucasus Resource Research Centers.

It is great you are producing a Russian-language version of the book -- that would reach a wider audience (a strategically important one, of local people who do not have western education/influence most probably. And according to CRRC data in general people with good/excellent Russian language knowledge have pretty different attitudes from people with good/excellent English language knowledge)

Even so, if all the posts for my project in 2010 were written in English, the first posts for 2011 look likely to be written by non-English speaking activists from Azerbaijan and Armenia. For the first time in the history of the project, their contributions will be posted in Russian before being translated into English. Meanwhile, volunteer translation projects such as TED Open Translation, Global Voices Lingua, Dotsub, and even my own Conflict Voices shows that multilingual support is possible without needing to seek funding in order to do so. Basically, if individuals are committed and interested enough in a cause, there will be those with the necessary professional skills to contribute in the area of translation. 

Simply put, when there’s the will, there’s the way. And, as all translation was volunteered thanks to contacts made on social networking sites such as Facebook, it also indicates why successful outreach can be beneficial not only in terms of disseminating information, but also in terms of attracting support and volunteers. Financial support is to be welcomed, of course, but the lack of it is not reason enough to limit the potential reach or success of any project. This is particularly true when, in the case of Armenia and Azerbaijan, English-speaking activists can also speak and write in Russian, as well as in their mother tongue, too.

Anyway, this is true for the Caucasus at least. I’d be interested in hearing the experience of others in the use of language for cross-border communication, cooperation and peace building projects and initiatives elsewhere in the world.