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 has provided 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. More.

See: The Daily Princetonian

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