We believe in creating multilingual spaces accessible to all.

COMPA Philly Language Justice Cooperative is a group dedicated to growing language justice in Philadelphia by offering quality interpretation and translation services. Arch Street United Methodist Church partners with COMPA to care for our equipment so that groups organizing in Philadelphia can create multilingual movements.

Philadelphia’s movements for social justice and organizing efforts are powerful forces across the city. Language Justice — the practice of setting up organizing spaces in ways that make it possible for people to express themselves in their own languages, organize, and build solidarity across languages — makes our movements stronger. 

While many local organizations have been interpreting and translating for years, local language workers (interpreters and translators) have recently come together to discuss how our grassroots movements can do even better. One of the major needs language workers have identified is for local organizations to have accessible, affordable interpretation equipment to use for meetings, panels, cultural events, rallies, and conferences. Beyond the actual equipment, there is also limited knowledge about what interpretation equipment is, and what it takes to train people to become skilled simultaneous interpreters.

Simultaneous interpretation is the practice of interpreting through equipment in real-time. It means that during a community meeting everyone wears equipment and hears each other speak in their native language with a delay of only a few seconds. Until recently, interpretation equipment was not economically accessible for our communities and still often isn’t. Integrating simultaneous interpretation into our community spaces (with portable receivers and transmitter sets, or Zoom’s simultaneous interpreting feature), training community interpreters to use them, and training organizations to work with interpreters is a transformative experience for everyone involved. It creates the opportunity for people who have a language barrier between them to connect, hear and speak directly to each other. If used properly, it can help to shift power dynamics within organizations and campaigns by centering the leadership of the most impacted communities. Using interpretation equipment, along with building the capacity of language workers to use it, is a huge step in the direction towards integrating language justice into the work we do for economic, racial, environmental/climate, and gender justice.