The Listening Zones of NGOs: languages and cultural knowledge in development programmes

在发展方案中，非政府组织传统上把自己定位为倾听受益者和与之合作的当地社区的声音。尽管这种关系通常被非政府组织描述为当地社区发言和非政府组织倾听的会议，但外语在这些接触中的作用在很大程度上没有引起注意。在国际关系和发展研究领域，人们对这些非政府组织/地方会议不可避免的“外来”方面，以及外国语言和文化知识在这些会议中可能发挥的作用几乎没有兴趣。虽然与人道主义非政府组织合作的语言挑战已经开始引起语言/翻译学者的注意，但在发展方案领域，与外语有关的研究仍然很少。在发展工作中缺乏对外语的系统研究，这促使我们将重点放在非政府组织听取受益者意见的方式以及它们采取的语言政策和做法上。“非政府组织听力区”将来自两所大学的专家聚集在一起，与英国非政府组织从业人员研究和发展的关键机构--牛津国际非政府组织培训和研究中心--建立了一个创新的联盟。凭借与大约200个非政府组织合作二十多年的记录，研训所为该项目提供了接触非政府组织发展部门的无与伦比的机会。牵头调查员在冲突地区的语言政策和实践以及非政府组织问责制和全球治理方面有学术背景，他们的大学雷丁大学和朴茨茅斯大学为这项研究提供了一个支持性的跨学科环境，有多样性、权利和代表性、扫盲和多语种以及发展和安全方面的专家。该项目侧重于设在英国的四个大型和成熟的非政府组织，将在马拉维、秘鲁和吉尔吉斯斯坦三个不同的案例研究中审查它们的语言政策和做法，选择这些案例研究是为了反映非政府组织活动的不同语言环境(特别是英语的状况)、持续干预的不同历史时期以及通过INTRAC目前的联系在业务上的便利程度。该项目将使用一系列不同的资源：非政府组织和政府/机构捐助者的档案；非政府组织和国际发展部目前的在线文件；对非政府组织国际工作人员、国内工作人员、伙伴组织工作人员、当地社区、语言中间人和外交部/国际发展部官员的半结构化访谈；在每个案例研究领域举行一次人种学观察会议，定期举行一次国内审计会议。我们认为，这一项目将使我们能够制定一个框架，分析外语在非政府组织发展工作中的作用，今后可将其用作对非政府组织发展方案进行更大规模国际比较研究的基础。‘非政府组织倾听区’旨在确保外语在发展中的相关性以一种强有力的学术研究的方式进入公共舞台，这些研究将为公众辩论提供信息，并激发所有相关者的未来思考，特别是发展非政府组织、政府/机构资助者和专业笔译/口译人员。通过咨询委员会广泛的非政府组织联系网络，以及专门的讲习班、研讨会和会议，该项目力求让这些群体参与正在进行的研究，与他们分享成果，为影响未来的政策和实践提供量身定制的实用建议，并为关于外语和文化知识在全球国际发展世界中的作用的后续学术研究奠定基础。

In development programmes, NGOs traditionally position themselves as listening attentively to the voices of the beneficiaries and local communities with whom they work. Despite the fact that this relationship is normally presented by NGOs as a meeting in which local communities speak, and NGOs hear, the role of foreign languages in these encounters passes largely unnoticed. In International Relations and Development Studies there has been little interest in the inevitable 'foreign' dimension of these NGO/local meetings, and in the role which foreign languages and cultural knowledge may play within them. Whilst the language challenges of working with humanitarian NGOs have begun to engage the attention of language/translation scholars, the world of development programmes is one in which foreign language-related research is still largely absent. This lack of systematic study of foreign languages in development work has encouraged us to focus on the ways in which NGOs listen to their beneficiaries, and the language policies and practices that they adopt.'The Listening Zones of NGOs' brings together specialists from two universities in an innovative association with a key body in NGO practitioner research and development in the UK, the International NGO Training and Research Centre, INTRAC, Oxford. With its record of over twenty years working with some two hundred NGOs, INTRAC offers the project unrivalled access to the NGO development sector. The lead investigators have an academic background in language policy and practice in conflict zones, and in NGO accountability and global governance, and their universities, Reading and Portsmouth, provide a supportive interdisciplinary environment for this research with specialists in Diversity, Rights and Representation, Literacy and Multilingualism, and Development and Security. The project, focusing on four large and well-established UK-based NGOs, will examine their language policies and practices over time in three contrasting case studies- Malawi, Peru and Kyrgyzstan- chosen to reflect different language landscapes for NGO activity (particularly defined by the status of the English language), different historical periods of sustained intervention, and operational ease of access through INTRAC's current links. The project will use a range of different resources: the archives of NGOs and government/institutional donors; current NGO and Department for International Development (DFID) online documentation; semi-structured interviews with NGO international staff, in-country staff, staff of partner organisations, local communities, language intermediaries, and Foreign Office/DFID officials; and a session of ethnographic observation in each case study area involving a regular in-country audit meeting. We believe that this project will enable us to develop a framework for analysing the role of foreign languages in NGO development work which could be used in the future as the basis for a larger comparative international study of NGO development programmes. 'The Listening Zones of NGOs' aims to ensure that the relevance of foreign languages in development enters into the public arena in a way which is backed up by robust academic research which will inform public debate and stimulate the future thinking of all those concerned, in particular development NGOs, government/institutional funders, and professional translators/interpreters. Through the Advisory Board, the extensive network of INTRAC NGO contacts, and dedicated workshops, seminar and conference, the project seeks to involve these groups in the on-going research, share results with them, provide tailored and practical advice to influence future policy and practice, and lay the foundation for follow-up academic research on the role of foreign languages and cultural knowledge in the global world of international development.