COVID-19 has quickly turned into a global problem as it ravages every corner of the world. It doesn’t go out to deliberately choose its victims it makes do with the victims being all over the place. It particular likes groups so it only needs to infect one person and in a remarkably quick time dozens of people go down with the disease. 

What are Translators Translating today?

Often, translators work in the quiet of their own homes but this doesn’t mean they are not translating important documents. Many at this very second will have been given the job of translating documents related to the outcome of research conducted on this COVID-19 virus. These could be in any language as new information flows around the globe and every researcher, scientist and government ministry is waiting with open arms for the potential solution to this deadly outbreak.

Misinformation can be Damaging

One of the most difficult jobs of anyone interested in accumulating knowledge about COVID- 19 is being able to discriminate between fact and fiction before deciding the relevance of any research outcome. This means multilingual translations of any documents are more important than they have ever been. Every scientist in every language wants to know what the other scientist is doing so they can make announcements of any breakthroughs that enable a better understanding of how COVID-19 works. 

Break the Communication Barriers

As soon as say, Australia, has made an important breakthrough regarding a method for treating victims of COVID-19, it doesn’t want to conceal it but share it throughout the world so more people can be saved. The official COVID-19 website will publish all the known facts about COVID 19 as they come in. This means to reach the people quickly it will have to get all the information translated into all the languages used in the country.  In an Australasian country, this is likely to be te reo Māori, Thai, Arabic, Korean, Simplified Chinese, French, Farsi, German, Japanese, Indonesian Hindi, Gujarati, Italian and First Nation languages of Australia too. In the USA the largest language group after English is Spanish so any important announcement about COVID-19 will appear in Spanish.

Gathering new Information is Happening all the time

It has now got to the point that it is vital to get key facts out to every corner of the planet about the best way to protect oneself both from getting the virus to spreading it. It is important to create awareness if this crisis is ever to come to an end. 

Many of the worlds acclaimed researchers don’t necessarily speak English well so it is vital to keep them up-to-date in their own native languages. Translators may assist researchers to disseminate research results so that they can receive feedback and suggestions as quickly as possible. The internet provides the means to spread information at lightning speeds so everyone who wants to can be kept informed.

Information in the scientists’ native languages assists them with focusing more on their work than trying to understand languages they do not know well.

Sharing Knowledge about COVID 19 for the first time

China was the place that COVID-19 first emerged and it provided information about the outbreak via the World Health Organization. It then wrote and published a handbook describing what happened and what can be learned from COVID-19 so far. They then discussed the matter with the University of Foreign Languages at the Centre for Medical Language Services of Guangdong. Through this collaboration, many of the world’s key translation service providers have joined forces so that the information flows in all of the world’s languages. It hasn’t been easy as even translators have been struck down with COVID-19 meaning they aren’t able to fulfil all their translation requirements until they are better.

Translation service providers are vital in times of a pandemic such as COVID-19 because they facilitate information exchange between researchers, governments and the public so that the right action can be taken.