There are no winners in war. Worried about imploding markets and the long-term effects of the tragic events unfolding in Ukraine, LocLunch founder Jan Hinrichs came up with the idea of a Ukrainian Language Pledge to pool localization industry resources and help the Ukrainian linguists affected by the conflict.

As more refugees keep arriving at the border, and the suffering and destruction are becoming omnipresent, a new reality is setting in. What does this mean for all our localization colleagues in the region?

If we continue to apply only rational business logic, the results will likely be catastrophic for them: without a market or business, investments will dry up quickly. It might take a long time for the Ukrainian language market to rebound. Experts estimate between two and 10 years. Many linguists who have families to feed won’t have that much time.

It is with this in mind that just this last week, Jan set out to get as many industry resources involved as possible. ProZ founder Henry Dotterer and Andrew Federici from Smartcat agreed to make their respective databases of Ukrainian translators and interpreters available to the public so it would be easier for them to be contacted for work.

At MultiLingual, we care deeply about what is going on in Eastern Europe and therefore have decided to be part of the effort as well. Not only will we be sharing the RSS feed of Ukrainian linguists on our career page, but behind the scenes, we are actively encouraging companies to make the #languagepledge #Ukrainian and commit to the continued support of Ukrainian localization efforts.

Translation budgets often account for little in the bigger scope of a corporate balance sheet.

Supporting a language is a powerful sign of long-term commitment towards stakeholders (employees, customers, partners, friends, and the broader public). In short, it helps to build brand value, trust, and social equity.

Corporate demand will decide whether some 30,000-50,000 Ukrainian translators and interpreters will be able to support their families or must find new jobs.

The #languagepledge hashtag followed by the language name (e.g. #ukrainian) will help us to identify corporations that keep language support up as long as possible or even add the language to their portfolio and thus support individual professionals and service providers to stay in business in these hard times.

Join the movement and share the idea!