Translation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: performance without recognition
Adhikari, BalramORCID: 0000-0003-3487-2723 and Shrestha, SagunORCID: 0000-0001-9982-7275
(2022)
Translation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: performance without recognition.
Bridge: Trends and Traditions in Translation and Interpreting Studies, 2
(2).
pp. 4-28.
ISSN 2729-8183
As a means of overcoming language barriers, translation has the
potential to communicate risk in multilingual crisis contexts. There are
some studies related to crisis translation (Al-Shehari 2020, Drugan 2020,
O’Brien and Cadwell 2017); however, there exists no comprehensive study that explores translation for risk communication in Nepal, which is the context of this study. The present study investigates the scope of
translation in COVID-19 crisis management policies and its role in
communicating risk information in health and education sectors. This
qualitative case study examined policy documents and guidelines
concerning health and education, analysed COVID-19-related documents
(re)produced by different national and international organizations in
Nepal, and interviewed four officials of such organizations and 10 end
users. The findings indicate that translation plays an important, but an
unacknowledged role in COVID-19 crisis communication in Nepal. Despite the lack of policy-level recognition, different forms of translation, viz. overt, covert and intersemiotic constitute an integral part of crisis
communication. This study is expected to help policymakers and crisis
translators understand the values of translation during crises so that the
potentials of translation can be exploited while developing crisis-related
documents.