Refugee Phrasebook provides useful phrases and information for newcomers
Welcome to Refugee Phrasebook. Together we are building an open collection of useful words and phrases for refugees who just arrived. The phrasebook is created in a set of google doc sheets, with the help of volunteers from Berlin and all over the world. Everyone is free to adapt, print and distribute the phrases to support refugees.
Following up on our December update, we prepared a 2 minute video to highlight current challenges and plans for the project. Thank you all for your support!
Refugee Phrasebook is an open collaborative project to provide important vocabulary to refugees. It assembles important phrases from various fields and encourages designers and experts in the field to improve on the material.
While the first collection of phrases was still limited to a closed document with a narrow use case, volunteers quickly migrated the data to an open table in Google Sheets and significantly increased the number of participants with their network. This step also emphasized a commitment to transparency and openness by publishing the data with a Creative Commons license (CC0), reuseable for refugee aid projects everywhere. Due to translation requests from helpers, the length of the tables has more than tripled since August.
The phrases now include a broad range of topics, from a simple “Hello” to “ I need to see a doctor”, covering a general set of phrases as well as sentences for juridical and medical needs.
Local initiatives are welcome to adapt, print and distribute all contents of this page(→FAQ) to support refugees in all regions. It currently contains vocabulary in 28 languages:
- Refugee Phrasebook (orientation / multipurpose)
currently >561 items in >44 languages - Medical Phrasebook
currently 150 items in 28 languages, ca. 80% translated - Juridical Phrasebook
currently looking for lawyers to contribute
Do you want to support the project and distribute copies to refugees? The current printable versions (wiki + pdf) can be found here. You can also create a custom version.
We currently prepare the following datasets:
- Short version
including phrases for general orientation (>180 items) - Phrasebook for Orientation
including phrases for general orientation (>600 items), phrases for helpers (>150 items), short version (>180 items) - Medical Phrasebook
including medical terms (>150 items) - Juridical Phrasebook
including juridical terms (>150 items, experts needed for translation
To display a different language set, select “Languages” and confirm with “Apply”. To print a custom version of Refugee Phrasebook : How to create a printable version (step by step guide for LibreOffice)
The project is noncommercial, the books will be available for free and provided without further political or personal branding. The content is freely available under a Creative Commons License (CC0) and can be reused by anyone everywhere. (→FAQ)
For questions and feedback, contact us at [email protected]