Over the last months our profession has experienced serious pressure coming from the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown measures most countries in the world are experiencing to stop the spread of the epidemy. Although the main concern still remains our health wellbeing, most of us have started to question how this new reality will reshape our professional career and where potential opportunities will arise.
In this landscape of world health emergency and growing uncertainty, numerous professional ITI members coordinated by Sonia Ruggieri, specialised in the translation of medical content from English into Italian, have joined an international volunteer project, named COVID Translate, initiated by Sebastian Seung, a research scientist at Princeton and Samsung, aiming at sharing critical knowledge with governments, healthcare facilities, stakeholders and the general population about the successful strategies implemented in South Korea to fight the spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019.
The COVID Translate Project
The purpose of the COVID Translate Project is to share critical knowledge regarding effective institutional, healthcare and social measures adopted by South Korea to manage and flatten the COVID-19 curve. The COVID Translate team has selected priority documents from the KCDC (Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for translation that they believe would be most useful to policymakers and stakeholders around the world, for example useful templates for governments and hospitals around the world to follow, along with other guidelines, such as the social distancing measures, more accessible and applicable to the general population, crucial as lockdowns slowly become eased around the world.
The KCDC documents have been translated into seven languages thanks to the collaboration of professors, researchers, PhD students and professionals from prestigious universities – including, but not limited to Harvard Business School, City University of New York and University College London – of professional bodies and entrepreneurs from all over the world, and are accessible at www.covidtranslate.org
The Italian translators’ team has been working intensely for two months focussing in particular on the translation of the following documents:
Response Guidelines for Local Administrations
COVID-19 Screening Center Operation Guide
“Drive-Through” COVID-19 Screening Center Standard Operating Model
Guidelines for Routine Distancing in Social Life
available at covidtranslate.org and disseminated through the social media too.
The full text of the article is available on the ITI Bulletin, issue July-August 2020.
