In May of 2023, Thriving Earth Exchange started a new initiative focused on Spanish-language inclusion. As part of this effort, Marina Cox was hired to support Spanish-speaking communities, translate materials, and provide general guidance and expertise for being more inclusive of Spanish-speaking participants. We sat down with her recently to learn more about this initiative.
Marina welcoming reception attendees at AGU23 in Spanish
The Importance of Spanish Language Inclusion in Science Spaces
“Language inclusion as a whole is crucial for scientific societies and community science efforts because it helps bridge those language gaps and language barriers,” said Marina. Most scientific research is published and presented in English, which helps ensure that scientists can communicate across political and geographical boundaries. But it leaves out a lot of non-scientists who may not know English but deserve to access, understand, apply, and be part of decisions about science. If diversity, inclusion and justice are truly something that science organizations are striving towards then language-inclusion needs to be part of the conversation.
Spanish was an obvious choice for Thriving Earth Exchange as their first non-English language to focus on since it is the second-most commonly spoken language in the United States and a major world language. With projects in places like Texas, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Florida, etc. being able to include Spanish-speaking Community Leads expands Thriving Earth Exchange’s ability to support and give voice to communities that are often ignored or marginalized.
But Marina emphasized that language-inclusion is not just about accurately translating language. She works to ensure that what she creates, “is not just translated into their language but translated to them culturally as well.” For Marina, culturally inclusive content takes into consideration cultural norms, values, variation across communities, and important cultural touchpoints such as holidays and rituals.
Marina during her research and time as an oral historian in Colombia
Sharing Her Passion for Spanish-language Inclusion
Marina grew up in a multilingual household speaking Spanish, Catalan and English from a young age. Her mother is from Barcelona, Spain and her father from the United States. They encouraged her to explore languages by speaking in all three languages at home, sending her to a bilingual school, and visiting her mother’s family in Spain each year. This experience immersed her not only in languages but also culture and helped her appreciate how the two are intertwined. “I always say it’s the best present my parents could have given me, because I think it’s really shaped me into who I am today,” said Marina.
She took that gift with her to college where she double majored in Spanish and communications. During her undergraduate experience at Furman University, she had the opportunity to collect oral histories from Colombian immigrants in Greenville, South Carolina. This community had moved there in the 1960s and 1970s to help revitalize the textile industry in the area. After collecting and transcribing fifteen oral histories, she was able to travel to Medellín, Colombia to expand her work.
Marina said that the project was important because it “gave them [Colombian immigrants] a voice and it shed light how important their contribution was to history.” Sometimes the public representation for Colombians is mired in sensational stories about drug cartels and violence but this leaves out the experiences of most everyday people. For Marina, this oral history project was a powerful opportunity to connect her academic translation skills to an initiative that gave voice to people and their culture.
After college, Marina worked in small to large scale marketing positions. And while she had the opportunity to work on some Spanish-language campaigns it was not as fulfilling as the work she had done with oral histories. So, when she saw the posting for the Thriving Earth Exchange position, she jumped at the chance to once again bridge linguistic and cultural gaps. “I remember reading the project description and I had an immediate gut feeling that this was the role that I wanted to not only apply for immediately, but be a part of,” she said.
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How Thriving Earth Exchange is Incorporating Language Inclusion
Marina started by focusing on communities along the US-Mexico border and tapping into existing relationships and networks to engage Spanish-speaking communities and encourage them to start a project with Thriving Earth Exchange. This has required a lot of patience and deliberate work. Marina shared that this includes “a mixture of building that trust, being empathetic with them, and more importantly, developing culturally relevant content that they’ll be able to relate to and so they will feel heard.”
In order to ensure these communities have equal support and access to the resources that the Thriving Earth Exchange team provides to community science projects, Marina has had to think about language-inclusion for a variety of resources. She has led the project to ensure that thrivingearthexchange.org is translated into Spanish, has created orientation materials and resource guides in Spanish, and offers Spanish translation for projects and communication efforts. For example, she created Spanish-language captions for a short documentary about a Thriving Earth Exchange project in Corpus Christi, Texas. Marina also supports the Community Science Fellows team to ensure there are Fellows that can work with Spanish-speaking communities.
Now, almost a year and a half later, those efforts are paying off. The program has launched fifteen Spanish-speaking projects in the US, Mexico, and Peru. Two of these were recently highlighted in blog posts, which you can read about through the links below:
- Learn how the “Guardians of the Forest” are working with scientists to advance conservation in one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in Mexico (read in English | leer en Español)
- Find out how a tiny town in Peru’s Andean Mountains is charting a sustainable path forward in the face of climate change (read in English | leer en Español)
Spanish-language Inclusion at AGU
Thriving Earth Exchange hopes to continue working with Spanish-speaking communities and deepen those connections through additional projects, working with partners, and developing more resources. But Thriving Earth is not the only program at AGU working on Spanish-language inclusion. Below are just a few ways that AGU is incorporating language-inclusion into its work.
- Advice on publishing scientific articles(Consejos para publicar artículos científicos) webinar
- Guides for authors of journal articles and Eos translated into Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese.
- Eos, AGU’s award winning magazine, has articles translated into Spanish on their Eos en Español
- Translation of some AGU position statements into multiple languages such as Chinese, French, Hindi, Spanish and Portuguese.
- K-12 Science Education Resources has a coloring book about the geosciences in English, Spanish, and other languages, too.
Spanish-inclusion efforts at Thriving Earth Exchange are supported thanks to a generous grant from Anthropocene Alliance.
