Best of Both Words is a newsletter for language workers, community organizations, neighbors, and kinfolk about the evolving landscape of language justice. It’s an act of refusing binary, either/or thinking when it comes to language and the social relations that languages express. Best of Both Words is an engagement with the ways that this world is in dire need of language justice, and the ways that people are fighting to build it.
I’m taking a little detour with this newsletter. Instead of covering a specific news topic and its relationship to language justice, I want to offer practical strategies for how organizations can implement language justice, especially if they are starting from scratch or with very little experience in developing multilingual spaces.
I’ve had several clients tell me recently that they would love to implement language justice (LJ) in their work, but either they don’t know where to begin, or they feel like there are too many obstacles to do so (no budget, not enough bilingual staff, not an organizational priority, etc.).
When I hear this, I usually have the same response: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Marta didn’t become one of the best footballers ever overnight. Shangela didn’t become one of the best drag queens after just one show. The Amazon rainforest didn’t take only one season to grow.
Anything worth building—a skill set, a structure, an ecosystem of social relationships—takes planning, time, and intention.
Hence, my very first piece of advice is to start before you think you are ready.
Why? Because, likely, either you’re an over-thinker and you already have way more ideas and information than you think you do, or you lack ideas, and starting the process toward language justice will help you generate the vision that you need.
Whichever it may be, the act of starting with what you have, where you are, is the most impactful thing you can do. I’ll discuss below five tips for starting, but first, allow me to define a few terms I’ll be using.
Language Justice
A framework and process. It’s the right everyone has to communicate, to understand, and to be understood in the language(s) in which they feel most comfortable. It’s a commitment to creating spaces where no one language dominates over any other; in fact, it actively seeks to challenge the power dynamics behind why one language dominates another. Finally, LJ is a commitment to facilitating cross-language, multi-directional communication, rather than one-way, top-down communication.
Dominant Language
Sometimes referred to as the “official language” of a region or country. This is the language that is recognized by institutions and social/political power structures as the official, legitimate, or standard language of a territory, with structural advantages available for those who speak the dominant language(s) and disadvantages for those who do not. In the majority of the US, Standard American English (SAE) is the dominant language.
Language Access
A range of practices to make institutions and services available to people who are not fluent in the dominant language. The emphasis here is usually on inclusion in the existing spaces rather than transformation and expansion beyond how those spaces operate.
With these definitions in mind, let’s talk about introducing language justice in your organization by assessing the who, why, what, how, and when factors.
Five Meaningful Steps Toward Introducing LJ in Your Organization
First, assess the “Who.”
Language justice is a social question, a dynamic between groups of people, so you will need collaborators in this process. Who inside your organization is already on board with LJ? Who would benefit from further discussion or education? Who among your co-workers or partners already have the language and communication skills needed, and are there others who would be interested in developing such skills?
Tip #1: Set up a meeting with your collaborators to discuss LJ. You could discuss a reading, such as the foundational “How to Build Language Justice” by Antena Aire, and use that to self-assess and develop agreement/interest in building LJ.
Presumably, you are interested in LJ because you seek to or already operate in multilingual spaces and communities. Who are the speakers of another language whom you want to communicate with? You need to get really specific here, so perhaps some research is needed. Saying “Spanish speakers” is too broad to be of much help. Are they Spanish speakers originating from one or more countries, or a specific region within a country? Are they US-born or foreign-born? What is their socio-economic status? What class, racial, and gender divisions exist among this community that may need to be addressed within your LJ process?
Tip #2: Research and community engagement is key. You can always research online to get basic demographic information for a geographic region or area of work, but eventually you want to put real faces and stories to that data. Invite members of a community group to speak to your organization, or attend events/meetings organized by those local community groups so that you can learn about the needs of and conversations already happening in the community you want to engage. As you research, start social mapping (simply put, a map visualizing the various interactions between individuals/groups).
Lastly, you may need trained support and language services from outside of your organization. Do you have connections to trained translators and interpreters? Are there local or regional LJ trainers or consultants that could assist you in your process?
Tip #3: Schedule a consultation or training with someone who specializes in LJ. I offer such services or I can refer you to someone if you have a need for language pairs beyond Spanish & English. Reach out to me via email and social media, or set up a meeting here!
Second, establish your “Why.”
Think about why exactly you want to grow LJ within your organization’s work. Thanks to the hard work of millions across various social movements (Black Lives Matter & movements to address police violence, #MeToo, and immigrant justice movements, to name just a few), LJ and language access are gaining a lot of attention these days. But your “why” shouldn’t be “because it’s trending” or “because everyone else is doing it.” Assess how LJ is integral to the work you are specifically doing.
For instance, perhaps you are a reproductive justice organization operating in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. There is a large Spanish-speaking community and you seek to provide information about the changing legal landscape in Spanish, as well as gather oral histories from Spanish speakers about their healthcare experiences to shape a political campaign you are organizing.
Or perhaps you are an education-related organization operating in Houston in a neighborhood with a sizable Vietnamese-speaking community. You need to convey information about the recent state takeover of the school district and you want to support a group of families organizing against the takeover.
In either scenario, you could surmise that implementing LJ is a “strength in numbers” question, where the more people you connect with, the more successful you will be. However, I challenge all my clients to move beyond numbers or metrics and to think holistically about how LJ fits their specific mission and principles.
Then, brainstorm the “What.”
Once you have some sense of your “why” you can use that to envision what kind of impact you want to have and at what scale. Is there one language pair you want to operate in, or are there several languages you need to be able to move between? Do you want to impact one particular community—let’s say, Spanish-speaking caregivers with students in public schools in the southern US—or do you need to be able to engage at several scales at once?
Keep in mind that you need to be establishing multidirectional communication, rather than one-way lines of communication. The feedback you get and the buy-in you are pursuing from the target language community should be pivotal to shaping the impact and scale you aim for.
Tip #4: Get visual. Go back to that social map you created earlier and for each branch, write down 1-2 ways that LJ can strengthen the connections between people/groups.
Next, research the “How.”
This is the step of getting practical, deciding the concrete practices you will cultivate to bring your organization’s LJ vision to life. This will likely involve translation and interpreting services, as well as an educational component, such as anti-bias trainings for dominant language speakers, and possible an advocacy/organizing component.
When people think about implementing LJ, they often jump right to the “how” before anything else: they go out and hire an interpreter for an upcoming event or they get a few documents translated. But most likely, other language speakers won’t show up just because you hired an interpreter, since your event may not be reaching them if you aren’t already using an engagement strategy informed by multilingual priorities and practices. And those translated documents may remain unread if you’ve chosen documents that are of little interest to the language community you’re targeting.
In other words, the who, why, and what are essential to crafting an implementation strategy that actually works!
Certain aspects of your “how” will be internal-facing. Do you need to convince your organization to create a budget for LJ work? Do you need to apply for grant funding to support your LJ work? Do you want to develop an LJ guide or an expansive language guide to set expectations for your organization’s writing and presentations?
Tip #5: If you’re starting with a small budget, you may need to curate a short list of static documents, web pages, or social media content to translate, in order to avoid the higher cost of translating frequently changing content or documents that are irrelevant to your “who”.
Lastly, draft the “When.”
Develop a timeline with realistic, short- and long-term goals. Take the seemingly insurmountable task of introducing LJ into your work and break it down into very manageable tasks spread out over time. A timeline can make it clear which tasks are most critical and how to allocate time and resources effectively. It also creates a visual for your team members and collaborators to see the scope and sequence of activities. Perhaps most importantly, it sets benchmarks by which you can mark progress and celebrate your successes!
Tip #6: Work backwards to develop your timeline. And be specific! Identify your LJ goals and milestones, then break those down into concrete phases with realistic time frames. Keep each phase grounded by designating the resources needed, assigning responsibilities, and cultivating holistic approaches to communication that allow for review, feedback, and adjustments as necessary.
What next?
There is much more to be said, but hopefully, this is a helpful starter for introducing LJ into your organization’s work. I am passionate about supporting organizations in developing language justice practices at many different scales, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re ready to start that conversation. You can also visit my resources page for more information & tips to start reading on your own.
In other news…
El futuro de la lengua española en Estados Unidos: Esta ponencia fantástica de Kim Potowski se englobó dentro del II Curso de Verano del Instituto Cervantes en Madrid.
The ‘no sabo kids’ are pushing back on Spanish-language shaming: A growing group of young Latinos are using TikTok and social media to push back on not speaking perfect Spanish — an attempt to define their identity and heritage on their own terms.
Why Simple is Smart: Complicated language can send a signal that a writer is dense or overcompensating.
Tradhumanas de Nuestramérica – Podcast Episodio 18: Rebelde con causa: luchando por la justicia linguistica: Una entrevista con Irene Gotera, una abogada, lingüista y practicante restaurativa de Venezuela.
Translation in the spotlight…
This month’s selection isn’t a translated work, but a short piece written by a translator. Enjoy!
“The Break” (pg 25-26) by Danielle Maxson
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Lauren Ray 
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