#4: Solidarity is a community effort
One of the cornerstones of Guerrilla Media Collective is our pro-bono work, which we call Lovework. These are translations that we have provided for free to countless organisations and people over the years, almost always done on the condition that the end result becomes part of the Commons: we publish it on our blog, but anyone can then freely republish it wherever they please.
This was actually the only work that we did back when we started in 2013, but since we evolved into a professional cooperative we pay the work we do on an internal level. This means that nobody is paying us to do it, but we reserve a part of our resources internally to pay the translators and editors for their work. We've expanded its scope in recent years to include a couple of open calls and our Translators against the Machine article series, but it does have its limits. To quote everybody's parents, money doesn't grow on trees, and we often, sadly, end up prioritising paid work over Lovework.
We're trying to change that by applying for quite a substantial grant, which we would dedicate, in its entirety, to Lovework. If we're successful, our plan is to massively expand the scope of Lovework to provide our services not just to individual texts, but also to clients who would otherwise struggle to pay for them, all while making sure that we can put food on our tables.
We need your help.
The plan is to present our application with signatures of associations, publications, non-profits, individuals (etc etc) in the grant's target areas –supporting the rights of women, LGBTQIA+ people and migrants – who will make use of our services. This is very much a case of "more=merrier", so if you work in the aforementioned areas and your organisation would benefit from language services (translation, copywriting, copyediting) that you cannot afford, or you know of someone who would benefit from them, please share this liberally, and get in touch with us at hello@guerrillamedia.coop. The deadline is June 1, so hurry!
New article!!
Just in time for this newsletter, we've uploaded our latest Translators against the Machine article. This one is by Renata Fernandes, a translator based in São Gonçalo, Greater Rio de Janeiro area, who writes about the challenges of translating as an autistic, disabled person, and how the capitalist translation industry fails to accommodate neurodivergence of any kind. While she focuses on translation, her ideas speak to the precarious existence of anyone caught in the freelance grind.
