COVID-19: An urgent multilingual response for global health
The rapid spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic is fueled by misinformation and a lack of accurate, timely information. The World Health Organization calls this an “infodemic” and it’s a major obstacle to fighting this disease.
At Translators without Borders, we’re helping aid organizations all over the world to communicate reliable, life-critical COVID-19 information in languages and formats that people will understand.
This work saves lives and helps “flatten the curve,” globally. But we need your help.
The demands for our work are far out-stripping our ability to meet them. We must urgently build up a surge fund to be able to deploy resources quickly, wherever they’re most needed—and to create lasting language resources to accelerate and amplify humanitarian responses everywhere.
Amazing, generous, companies just like yours are stepping forward to support our work. You can help, too:
How your donation will help:
- We’ll translate more COVID-19 content into more languages.
We’ll open our online translator matching platform and 30,000-strong translator community to grassroots organizations who urgently need to translate content now. This amplifies the impact and extends the reach of the front-line responders. - We’ll monitor social media in 12+ languages.
We’ll combat misinformation by spotting rumors and outbreak messages on social media and translating them for the relevant aid agencies so they can shape their communications. - We’ll add to our multilingual glossary of emergency health terms and advice.
An up-to-date, multi-language resource that helps our partners communicate critical health information clearly and consistently. - We’ll map languages and literacy in vulnerable regions.
So aid organizations can better target their responses.
All of this is urgent work that will make a direct impact on millions of people worldwide. Your support will help us ramp up the battle against COVID-19 today and help combat similar crises for many years:
Be a Founding Emergency Funder $100,000 or more)
Be a Lead Emergency Funder ($50,000 or more)
Be an Emergency Funder ($10,000 or more)
Each of these sponsorship levels comes with a comprehensive Recognition Program that’s customized for your company. We know this isn’t the reason you’re helping, but you deserve the recognition and it will inspire other companies to come forward.
“Trusted, accurate and timely information can help communities prevent or reduce the spread of disease, and guide those affected towards services and treatment.”
- BBC Media Action, March 2020
TWB’s COVID-19 work
We do much more than translation.
We shape the right message, medium and format, then identify and use the best languages for each audience. For populations with low-literacy levels, we turn health information into visual and audio formats.
Learn more about our response to this crisis here.
To support this urgent work, contact Sharda Sekaran, Head of Communications and Fundraising:
By donating today you will help enable our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and support all of our work wherever the need is greatest.
Thank you to the existing sponsors of this response:
