Princeton University Language Project transcends borders

Every Thursday afternoon, students interested in translation and language enrichment in a variety of languages such as Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Arabic gather in Butler’s 1915 Room. The Princeton University Language Project, affectionately known as PULP, is a student-run group whose primary focus is serving as a free translation service for NGOs. PULP hasprovided services for organizations such as The Red Cross, the Smithsonian Institution, UNICEF, the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and the Association to Benefit Children; current projects include work for EarthRights International, Azuero Earth Project and the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art.

A typical translation session lasts about an hour and a half. The members break off into groups based on language, and projects vary from more individual to more collaborative work. For the most difficult work, PULP encourages collaborative translation with discussion of the best possibilities. Depending on the project, a translation can take the length of one meeting, or sometimes an entire semester for longer projects of nearly one hundred pages.

PULP also hopes to enrich their members’ language and translation with the Translation Speaker Series, where a professor or invited guest speaks about linguistics or translation over dinner. The group offers a Language Fellows Program where undergraduate and graduate students are paired to practice their foreign language skills, with each partner having native competency in the other’s acquired language. PULP also organizes group trips to support their goals of language and translation enhancement. Last year they traveled to the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Street spoke to PULP president Bradley Berman ’16 to get the juicy details about his experiences with the organization. During Berman’s senior year of high school, he began teaching himself Mandarin Chinese and continued his study of the language in CHI 101: Elementary Chinese I at Princeton. He said that he felt “PULP was a great way to strengthen my Mandarin language skills through personal effort and by learning from other PULP members who were my mentors.” Berman also said that he found himself interested in translation and looking into other cultures and that he “perceived PULP as a hub of cultural and linguistic exchange.”

Berman found a supportive, collaborative community in PULP and a “comfortable, self-motivated atmosphere.” Part of this environment comes from the fact that many of the organization’s members are not native speakers, but current language learners. The group does involve graduate students who are native speakers and undergraduates with native or high-level language competency as editors for the language groups, in order to ensure a professional product.

As translation is one of the group’s main focuses, Street spoke to Berman about his experiences. Berman said, “I enjoy translating a variety of styles of writing, including culturally rich documents, and also more technical documents.” He explained that he enjoys the cultural documents because “it’s sometimes difficult to translate certain concepts or language and culturally specific vocabulary, and I have to find a way to creatively use my language skills to achieve a similar effect in the language into which I’m translating.” More technical documents, on the other hand, are often difficult because of specific words with which Berman is unfamiliar, he said.

For both types of documents, Berman said that he finds that “the most rewarding part of translation work is not only the personal sense of accomplishment I feel when I have successfully translated a document into Mandarin, but also the knowledge that my endeavors are making otherwise inaccessible information available to a wider audience.” Aside from that personal reward, Berman added that he also is proud of “watching a large translation come together through the collaborative work of PULP members.”

Indeed, language is a shared experience, which is a communicative and collaborative effort. PULP’s members recognize this and use vital aspects of language to advance and expand their language comprehension, assisting important international organizations in the process.