NGO providing language services and technology to humanitarian organizations in crisis and low-resource language contexts.
Translators Without Borders (TWB) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1993 that provides language services, translation technology, and language data infrastructure to humanitarian organizations, NGOs, and crisis response teams operating in low-resource language contexts where professional translation is unavailable or unaffordable. TWB's network of 100,000+ volunteer translators has produced millions of words of content in crisis languages including Hausa, Tigrinya, Rohingya, Somali, and dozens of other languages rarely served by commercial MT systems. The organization also develops and funds open-source language technology specifically for humanitarian use cases — including MT model training, ASR for low-resource languages, and tools designed for field workers without reliable internet connectivity. TWB's data and advocacy work has directly influenced language inclusion policies at UNHCR, OCHA, and MSF. For the broader language technology industry, TWB represents a critical voice for linguistic equity and the ethical obligations of AI developers toward underserved language communities.