More than 1,000 delegates and visitors from around the world will be participating in the 2005 quadrennial events in Indianapolis from June 22 - July 1. Since many international guests will have limited knowledge of the English language, a team of nearly 20 Olivet Nazarene University (ONU) students and leaders are responding to this need through a new interpretation pilot program.

Based in the White River Ballroom in the Indiana Convention Center, the translators will be available to help international delegates and visitors register and navigate the event and to help make connections between attendees from the many nations and cultures present. They will be offering inform interpretation assistance in several languages including Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Korean, Lingala, Ciluba, and Swahili.

These volunteers will provide crucial supplemental assistance to the official on-site interpretation services coordinated by World Mission Literature. More than 50 interpreters will be involved in Indianapolis, offering translation services in the following languages: Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Tok Pisin. In addition, assistance will also be available for deaf/hearing-impaired attendees.

The spark of this program came from Sylvette Rivera Geeding of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who contacted Barbara Martinez, a Spanish professor at ONU, about this critical need. Rivera Geeding, an SNU graduate, served as an editor for World Mission Literature, and is now part of a Hispanic Health Resource Center in Wisconsin. Martinez, and Mount Vernon Nazarene University and Southern Nazarene University graduate, taught Spanish at Mid-America Nazarene University 19 years, during which she and Rivera Geeding created and implemented Immersion Language Weekends for students.

They shared ideas of concern and prayed about meeting this important challenge. Together with Nazarene Headquarters in Kansas City, they initiated a pilot program for volunteer informal interpreters.

--ONU