How To Hire A Translation Services Provider For Your Public Health Advisory Campaign

Health advisory campaigns are developed, launched

, and managed by public health agencies and non-profit organizations. These advisories typically have the objective of educating a population about concerns and issues that are outside the daily routine and purview of somewhat pedestrian lines of thinking.

Non-English Patient Populations

For instance, its rather counterintuitive to believe that immunizations can actually have a good effect on you long term, considering that its quite common for patients to grow slightly ill after an inoculation with, say, the influenza vaccine. A health advisory campaign attempts to explain and educate a patient population about why youd fall slightly ill after an inoculation, and why this isnt something to worry about.

Considering the fact that there are many areas in the United Statessuch as the San Francisco Bay Area and the greater state-wide area of Californiathat are populated with people for whom English isnt their first language, translation of these health advisories becomes a critical part of the overall public health and educational campaign. The need for good Translation Services and resources are only amplified when public health specialists come to discover (in the empirical data) that certain diseases, conditions, and illnesses are more prevalent among particular communities.

Grading Translation Services Providers

Translation services are required in order to get the word out about public health issues, but how are specialists, leaders, managers, etc. at the helm supposed to measure the compatibility and suitability of one translation service provider versus another?

Translation is more qualitative than quantitative.

For one, you start with the fact that translation isnt a zero-sum, fixed substitute kind of situation. That is to say, there isnt going to be an exact Spanish-substitute, for example, per English word. Language just doesnt work that way. So while a health advisory leader or manager begins the due diligence process about a set of translators or translation providers, he or she should keep these things in mind:

Language is above all else cultural and qualitative.

When dealing with a specialized technical field such as medicine and public health, a translator or provider of translation services must have experience with these terms on both the English side of the translation and the non-English.

Because language is highly cultural, the approach in developing the copy for the poster or what have you may need to change depending on the targeted population (i.e. culture).

The last point is worth discussing further. In many non-Western cultures, talking about STDs, for instance, just isnt dealt with or approached in exactly the same way. The copy for the advisory material (whether that material be web media, print, etc.) may change dramatically. Remember that a health advisory campaign needs to break through to the population. This requires the campaign to not only speak the same literal language but to speak the same culture as well.

The last point that should be made about the translation of public health advisory content into non-English material has to do with basics of college-levelEnglish 101, i.e. diction, syntax, tone, voice and all of those other qualitative and quantitative dimensions of language that all undergraduate college students are required to know before proceeding to major classes, courses, and graduate-level focuses.

Subtle Differences that Could Kill a Campaign

A poor translation services provider might get you into trouble by returning translated copy to you in a tone thats not appropriate but does technically translate into the same meaning. This is the case in many Spanish speaking cultures as well as Asian cultures, wherein respect and salutations are somewhat more precise than is usually practiced in the U.S or UK.

by: Admond Rays

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