The fight against COVID-19 depends on all of us, but bad translation is setting up unnecessary roadblocks. Here’s how to fix it.
It’s year two of the COVID-19 pandemic and we’re still watching in horror as deaths pile up, illnesses and hospitalizations persist, more jobs are lost and more businesses close. Meanwhile, the current health emergency has brought the importance of public health front and center.
Public Health Includes Translation
Safeguarding public health—preventing disease and improving people’s quality of life—depends on the cooperation of as many people as possible. To get there requires both public awareness and buy-in, starting with effective communication.
Effective communication with the general public means making information available in English, Spanish and other common foreign languages, and disseminating it as widely as possible. As of 2018, 25.6 million people in the US spoke a language other than English at home and self-identified as someone who doesn’t speak English very well. (Most of this group speaks Spanish as a first language.) This means that if information isn’t available in their first language, then there’s a good chance that they might not get the information at all.
When COVID-19 first burst onto the scene, the CDC as well as many health departments, hospitals, clinics and other health organizations across the nation translated and disseminated potentially life-saving guidance on handwashing, masks and symptoms into a variety of languages with the immediate goal of preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Now, COVID-19 vaccination is the latest step in the fight against the virus. Public vaccination programs aim to reduce COVID-19-related deaths and illnesses, and allow public life to safely return in all its former glory. It behooves us all to work together and help make that happen. Yet, I was disheartened to read about the problems plaguing Maryland’s vaccine appointment scheduling system.
Quality Assurance
Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Navarro recently called attention to the Spanish translation errors that, instead of helping the state’s Spanish speakers make a COVID-19 vaccination appointment, created “a complete barrier.”
Where was the quality assurance that real communication demands—and the audience deserves? And what about other systems in other states? And other public communications in other languages? Have they been reviewed as well? Everyone is busier than ever, I know, but it’s not enough to hastily translate a message, or throw Google Translate at a text, just to tick some box. Public health communications that are translated well respect the reader, and that respect goes a long way toward fostering the buy-in that public health efforts require.
Independent Translation Review
If you or your colleagues produce or commission translations, then I highly recommend that it be followed by an independent review. An independent review performed by qualified in-house staff or qualified translation professionals will help ensure that errors never reach readers and the message is communicated as intended.
For further guidance, please read “The Best Way to Check If a Translation Is Okay: The Translation Checkers’ Kit” where I outline our recommended review process.