In 2010, almost 1.5 million people worldwide were diagnosed with breast cancer. Furthermore, around one in eight women in the U.S. will develop breast cancer sometime in their life. And men aren’t safe from the disease either—about 2,350 new cases of breast cancer in men will be diagnosed just this year alone.

According to the World Health Organization, a shocking one-third of deaths from breast cancer could be decreased if detected and treated early. This means nearly 400,000 lives could be saved every year.

That’s why when Corrine Ellsworth Beaumont, founder of breast cancer awareness campaign Know your Lemons, approached Gengo asking if we could offer pro-bono translation for her organization, we wanted to help.

Run by Worldwide Breast Cancer, the award-winning campaign is the first to work across multiple languages in a wide variety of literacy levels. Through its use of visual tools such as leaflets and posters, the campaign aims to educate women—and men—in recognizing what to look and feel for when identifying the cancer. It also provides easily digestible information on the steps involved in finding breast cancer, as well as tips in determining your risk level and advice in getting screened regularly.

A big part of this awareness is the ability by readers to view these essential materials in their native languages. A crowdsourced platform like Gengo could provide multiple translators to work on the project to bring varied perspectives to help reach a diverse audience in multiple languages.

Being the first pro-bono translation project we had ever offered, we weren’t sure if there would be any interest from our translators. So we tentatively reached out to our English to French translator community. We needn’t have worried—the response was resoundingly positive.

In addition to numerous translators volunteering to translate into French, translators jumped at the opportunity to translate the content into their languages, too. Barnabás Kanik, one of our English to Hungarian translators and an MA student in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Szeged in Hungary, was happy to help as he believes raising awareness for this cause is “pivotal”.

Our team of English to French translators included Alexandra Siedler and Niels Catillon as well as our very own Julien Crevits, a member of our Project Management Team, who volunteered his time to coordinate the project and check the translations.

Through using Gengo to fulfil their translation needs, the Know your Lemons campaign is now able to reach their audience in multiple languages, and is better equipped in its fight against breast cancer.

Thank you to all our translators who volunteered for or took part in this very special project.

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