Multilingual Dialogues about a Sustainable Future. Achieving a sustainable future begins with learning more about the 17 Global Goals and what they involve. With 193 UN member countries working towards achieving this global agenda by 2030, this means dialogues about sustainability are being held in a multitude of languages and cultural contexts around the globe.
Information on the SDGs is already available in various languages. For example, the UNRIC provides SDG content in 13 languages, while the UN ESCAP’s SDG helpdesk provides booklets on the SDG goals and targets in English, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and Japanese. In Malaysia’s multilingual society, we already have Malay versions of the SDGs and reports in both English and Malay.
In this website, we provide the SDGs in four major languages used in Malaysia: English, Malay, Tamil and Mandarin. Team members from the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya have developed these list by collating existing information from UN resources and Malaysian government reports, as well as translating where necessary to localize the content. Talking about important matters such as the future tends to be more meaningful in one’s own language, so we want to encourage youth to discuss the SDGs and their visions in whatever language they prefer. However, it’s important to have a shared space for these discussions, so that people with different language backgrounds do not work in isolation, but side-by-side.
We hope to add to the languages in our list in the future, to include SGD content in as many languages as possible, especially those spoken in Malaysia. By creating this multilingual list of SDGs, as well as the multilingual collection of youths’ visions, we hope to create a shared space to celebrate diversity and represent the various perspectives and people working together to achieve the Global Goals.
https://unric.org/en/sdgs-in-your-language/
https://sdghelpdesk.unescap.org/e-library/sdg-goal-and-target-booklets-multiple-languages.
The #MySusFuture project is led by staff and students from the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, in partnership with UM UNESCO Club and PCORE. The project aims to fulfil the following objectives:
a) Promote awareness about the sustainable development goals (SDG) among youths, specifically students from various courses at Universiti Malaya, by sharing SDG content in various major Malaysian languages (Malay, English, Mandarin, Tamil) through in-person and online activities.
b) Encourage young people to voice their SDG vision in their preferred language and share these visions on our website, in an e-book, and via social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
By conducting community activities to educate and initiate intercultural dialogue about the sustainable future, we can promote understanding and dialogue about the SDGs among Malaysians from different disciplines, cultures and backgrounds.
The MySusFuture project is funded by a Suruhanjaya Kebangsaan UNESCO Malaysia grant, conducted in partnership by
- Staff and students of Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya
- Universiti Malaya UNESCO Club, and
- PCORE, Association of Voices of Peace, Conscience and Reason
Last Update: 09/02/2023