Our Environment in your Language: People on the Thai/Burma Border Talk to a Dictionary Writer About Their Environment

Abstract

The dictionary I have been working on is for the Burmese refugees living in camps on the Thai – Burma border. It was originally conceived by an agriculturalist volunteer trying to help them grow or find enough food to feed their families in a new environment. The volunteer soon realised that though the people he was working with had learned some English at school, they were overwhelmed by all the technical terms and jargon in the materials he took with him to the camp. His original idea was a small handbook explaining the meanings of words to do with horticulture, but it soon became clear that issues about soil and water and such-like had to be dealt with in terms of a bigger ecological picture which could take account of the fact that everything in our world is interdependent and in a state of natural balance that we change at our peril. Funding for a dictionary of environmental terms was made available by the German Green Party, via the Heinrich Boell Foundation, and from that tiny beginning five years ago, a significant volume is now nearing completion.