How A Localization Service Can Prevent The Next Pandemic

Living in an English-speaking country, we often feel that information is at our fingertips, as we can Google any question and find the answer quickly. During the Covid-19 period, people actively sought information on infection symptoms, vaccine development progress, and the state of the pandemic. But it still is not easy for people in non-English speaking areas to find information effectively. Enter the help of international development translation services provided by a professional localization service.

The Language Gap And How A Localization Service Can Help

There are about 7,100 languages worldwide, but translation services like Google Translate support only around 100 languages. An article mentioned, “For over half of the world’s population, people can’t expect to Google their symptoms, nor even get a pamphlet from their doctor explaining their diagnosis, because it’s not available in a language they can understand.”

How World Governments Are Addressing the Problem

Many national governments and volunteer agencies are actively translating Covid documents. The five WHO guidelines have been translated into posters in more than 220 languages, and WHO’s myth busters fact sheets have been translated into over 60 languages. Language Connections even helped the local governments translate public materials into many different languages.

But there is still a language gap. For example, South Africa and Brazil governments often spread the Covid information most in English rather than other official languages. This makes it challenging for people who do not understand English to obtain accurate information.

Why A Localization Service Is Important

The best way to stop the spread of a disease is to localize the disease information and send it to everyone worldwide. At the early stage of the epidemic, when there was no vaccine, all we could do was change how we lived, including washing hands frequently and keeping social distance.

In addition, providing COVID-19-related content, both written and audio-visual, in various languages to be accessible enough to keep everyone safe is far from being as quick and easy as you might expect. Luckily, translation and localization services play a vital role in the progress. If the information can be translated faster, then the pandemic can be controlled earlier in more regions. For example, Seattle’s King County has been producing fact sheets in languages spoken by local immigrant and refugee communities, such as Amharic, Khmer, and Marshallese.

Language service providers can provide accurate legal translation services, video translation, or document localization services. But in the face of a global pandemic like Covid-19, eliminating the language gap still is a huge challenge even for professionals. Going forward, governments around the world should strive to invest in the appropriate language services in advance of the next pandemic in order to ensure that everyone, regardless of language, can have access to accurate public health information.