TED NewsDesk, New Delhi: The United Nations declared September 30 as the International Translation Day during its General Assembly on May 24, 2017. In the ever-increasing cosmopolitanism of a world where people can interconnect through a slight touch of a finger, where the world is a giant, multicultural, multiethnic and multilinguistic city, the role of translators has become paramount. The UN honoured the need to recognise the work of translation and its importance,
“International Translation Day is meant as an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of language professionals, which plays an important role in bringing nations together, facilitating dialogue, understanding and cooperation, contributing to the development and strengthening world peace and security.”
This year’s theme is- ‘Finding words for a world in crisis’- focusing on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The theme celebrates the translators who are working incessantly to help people survive and cope up with COVID-19.
As is the typical characteristic of a period of crisis, there is a lot of misinformation floating on the internet, via online platforms and other self- serving elements regarding the COVID-19 situation. COVID-19 is a global cataclysm that has put every bit of organised machinery, from national governments to NGOs, and international human rights organisations to medical institutions across the globe in a constant state of emergency. Its global nature has forced these entities to create communication channels essential to managing the pandemic, which in turn created a need for translators who could translate and dissipate correct information.
Translators Without Borders
One of the organisations is Translators Without Borders (TWB) which launched the COVID-19 Community Translations Programme. Under the programme, community- based institutions utilise the online database and resources of the TWB translators’ community. A number of these translators are involved with translating COVID-19 information in local languages.
Due to its active role during the pandemic, many local communities and organisations are requesting TWB to help them with translating COVID information for their non- English speaking members. This information generally includes translating immigration and travel bans, social distancing information, information regarding the prevention and control of infection in various languages.
A dearth of translators in rural areas
While city-dwellers are able to collect information related to COVID-19 from their mobile phones, TVs, social media mostly in English, Hindi and the dominant local language (Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi etc.), speakers of various dialects and minor languages find it difficult to gather pandemic- related information. During the lockdown period, the information relayed by the government, the state, hospitals, schools and other organisations active in alleviating the pandemic were usually in English, making it difficult to reach the masses equally. Keeping this in mind, the UN based this year’s theme on the ‘crisis’ of COVID-19 and the appreciation of translators who worked hard to make correct information available to the public and to encourage translation as a powerful medium of communication.
Translation can help in many ways in the medical community, for example, it can provide correct instruction on the use of medical instruments and facilities; it helps medical care providers to communicate with their patients better. It helps to communicate directions received from the government to every faction of the society; it is of great use in telemedicine which is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the medical field. Additionally, many countries can work together in the development of new vaccines with the help of translation during research work.
India is a multilinguistic country with more than 19,500 mother tongues spoken, proving it quite tricky for any information to flow to far reaches of the country. COVID-19 pandemic proved that India needs a lot of human resources in the area of translation to make the medical system work efficiently. With information not being appropriately dissipated, it is no surprise that the country is witnessing such high numbers of COVID-19 infections. It is imperative that the Union learns from the current situation and works towards forming a body that can serve as translators at state and district levels.
This International Translation Day, The Education Daily appreciates the dedicated community of people involved in translation and other related fields, making public services like healthcare more accessible. TED also hopes for the government’s judicious involvement in providing these services to the needy in the linguistically diverse country that is India.