In the earthquake's aftermath, volunteers rushed to the quake-stricken region to provide their services as translators and became the voice of the rescue teams who traveled from different countries around the world to help Türkiye in the hard times of the catastrophe.

Volunteer translators, who shared the struggle of the search and rescue teams because of the language barrier, shared their experiences with Anadolu Agency (AA).

After the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, which struck the eastern part of the country on Feb. 6 causing thousands of deaths and leaving millions of people homeless, the efforts of volunteer translators were in the fore.

Indonesian student Irsyad Muhammad Aziz, who studies physics at Gazi University, headed to Hatay as a volunteer to assist Indonesian medical teams during the relief work. Aziz, who has been living in Türkiye for about 1.5 years, said that he was very surprised and deeply saddened when he heard the news.

Aziz said that as soon as he received the news that an interpreter was needed in the field hospital established by the Indonesian medical teams, he set out for Hatay from Ankara. Expressing his affection for the country, 19-year-old Aziz said that Türkiye is his second home. He worked with the rescue teams for about two weeks.

Meanwhile, Barış Tuğrul, an academic at Hacettepe University Faculty of Communication, said that he has a good command of Spanish and that he went to Adıyaman with search and rescue teams from Mexico and volunteered as a translator. Stating that he provided communication between the local authorities and Mexican teams in Adıyaman, by speaking mostly Spanish and sometimes English. Tuğrul shared that foreign search and rescue teams had difficulties in calling out to the people in the wreckage because they did not speak Turkish and they needed a translator. Tuğral described that this was his first experience working in a disaster-hit area and it was extremely upsetting to see the miseries and damage caused by the catastrophe.

Sharing his most striking memory, Tuğrul said: "One of the most memorable instances that stuck in my mind was when a mother, whose daughter was rescued from the wreckage, thanked the search and rescue dog in tears."

Explaining that primarily his duty was to "act as a bridge in terms of communication for the locals and the rescue teams," Tuğrul said that whatever he saw in the earthquake zone affected him a lot even after he left the region and the memories would keep haunting him for a time long time.

Similarly, Yusuf Hasan Köse, who took part as a volunteer translator in the South African Gift of the Givers team during their search and rescue efforts shared that the stamina of an 80-year-old woman who was rescued from the rubble on the 10th day of the earthquakes affected the whole team and this strength was an inspiration for the entire team and the people in the region.

Kose, a third-year student at Sakarya University's Department of International Relations, said that as soon as he heard the news of the earthquake on social media, he was "stunned" and immediately tried to reach his friends living in Kahramanmaraş. He worked as a translator for the teams involved in search and rescue efforts in the region right after the second earthquake.

Lauding the positive approach of the local people toward the search and rescue teams, Köse shared: "People offered whatever food they had left and tried their best to ease the rescue efforts so that the teams could save as many lives as possible."