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I once had the opportunity to go on an interpreting assignment in Dorofi, a small town situated in Nigeria, right next to the border with Cameroon. And I was struck by the similarities I noticed between the people living across the border. They shared the same Fulani culture, traditions, history, myths… but needed someone to come from hundreds of kilometres away to help them communicate.
They had been separated by colonization, which had created French-speaking Fulanis on one side of the border and English-speaking Fulanis on the other. During the meeting, a high level security encounter between officials of both sides, I wanted to shout to them that you people are all the same and it is a pity you need a foreigner to help you talk to each other. Unfortunately, there are many Dorofis around the world. A trip to the Irish border or to the Franco-Spain border and you will come across many brothers and sisters people who have been pushed apart by physical then linguistic borders.
So Dorofi Translations is my own way of shouting to the world that we are all the same, we all breathe the same air, sleep to the same dreams, dance to same tunes, rejoice and cry for the same things but language barriers keep us from seeing how close we are.
I hope this agency will contribute, in its own little way, to making the world feels like home, a home where language is no more a problem and where we all see each other as the brothers and sisters that we are.
