Access to healthcare information for Thailand’s migrants remains a challenge throughout the COVID-19 crisis, despite the Thai government’s efforts to support this vulnerable group. This study investigates the Thai authorities’ approach of health communication for migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role and network of translators/interpreters as the state’s agent by adopting the concepts of translation and interpreting in crisis communication and actor-network theory. This article focuses primarily on Myanmar translators/interpreters in the Thai context. The findings show that the state’s translation/interpreting efforts during the pandemic were lackadaisical in meeting such linguistic demands for migrants who have contributed significantly to Thailand’s economic growth for more than two decades. Despite the state’s adoption of a national language policy, Thai linguistic nationalism remains dominant. Such a move appears to unintentionally contain the sense of ‘foreign contamination’ brought to Thailand by these ‘inferior’ nationals but stands in stark contradiction to their trans-border language demands. Furthermore, the existing network of Thai translators/interpreters, which should assist the government in strengthening health communication for disadvantaged communities, is underdeveloped. Competing factions, non-inclusive member recruiting, and a particular priority on language pairs all thwart the network’s establishment process. The private hospitals’ translators/interpreters for Myanmar are not strongly affiliated with professional networks but with an imbalanced structure of networking.
With the rapid development of digitisation and the dominance of social streaming platforms, the way we approach pedagogy for translation has changed significantly, especially under the circumstances of COVID-19. Teaching traditionally in the classroom seems insufficient to account for today’s overall distance learning atmosphere. Combined online and offline teaching models, this paper borrows the concept of “multimodality”, developed by Kress and van Leeuwen ( 2001 , 4), to capture “when and how technologies are specialised or multi-purpose” in the application of remote teaching and learning for translation. Therefore, this article describes a teaching project which investigates the insights into three critical components inspired by non-professional subtitling and dubbing into a formal teaching context. These are a two-step pre-course preparation: a student-led questionnaire and an in-class quiz, the teamwork production of AVT works and a final post-reflection targeted at oral presentation and written review. Pedagogically, this collaborative approach enables students to improve translator competence, cultural awareness and technological capacities.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted people’s professional and personal life in different ways across the globe. Adopting an enlarged view of localization which goes beyond market interests and extends to public concerns, this paper aims to examine the adaptive processes through which interpreters (and by extension providers and users) have localized the COVID-19 phenomenon in Qatar. To do so, it draws on an approach which combines narrative and practice theories. Considering that practices are storied and narratives are enacted, we focus on the ‘doings’ and the ‘sayings’ of interpreters. We present the findings of a case study conducted with Qatar-based interpreters. The primary data consists of qualitative, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with active interpreters across settings and levels of expertise in the Qatar interpreting industry. This sample allowed us to collect rich stories of interpreters’ experience at the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: between March 2020 and March 2021, coinciding in Qatar with the first lockdown and the subsequent easing of restrictions with the establishment of precautionary measures. The findings show that interpreters adapt to the COVID-19 crisis and contribute to its response in ways that are specific to the cultural, temporal and spatial configuration of practice.
This paper examines how digital users in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to the COVID-19 pandemic via engaging with crisis translation by subtitling COVID-19-related videos. It explores two aspects: (1) how did social media during the pandemic encourage subtitled videos? and (2) how were these clips distributed and received by social media users? It is argued that during the pandemic, social media facilitated the production and circulation of user-generated content by both individuals and institutions to subtitle global news and other genres. To understand the socio-digital dynamics of (fan)subtitling, this article analyses the subtitled clips posted on Twitter by the Saudi Ministry of Health (MoH) and 17 fansubbers during 2020. Subtitling is considered crucial in spreading accurate information to KSA people in time for them to take precautions against the pandemic in 2020. Another relevant factor is the developed technological infrastructure in KSA and the increased digital practice of Saudi Arabians using social media. Following the analysis of 175 clips from the 17 chosen fansubbers and 255 clips from the MoH, it was discovered that social media increased the visibility of COVID-19 clips with subtitles. There was an apparent competition among the fansubbers to accumulate social capital (social media capital), which gave rise to social media fansubbing, a form of non-professional subtitling produced by social media users. The subtitled clips were accompanied by various digital parataxis that supports the analysis and examination of social media fansubbing and crisis transition on Twitter 1 .
