This collection advocates languages-based, translational research to be part of the partnerships and collaborations required to make sense of, and respond to, COVID-19 as one of the major global challenges of our time.
Bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, this volume is bound by a common thread stressing the importance of linguistic sensitivity, (inter)cultural knowledge and translational mediation in the frontline response to COVID-19. Featuring contributors from around the world and reflecting on the language used to frame COVID-19 in diverse cultural contexts of the Global North and Global South, the book proposes that paying attention to the transmission of ideas, ideologies, narratives and history through processes of translation results in a broadening of social, cultural and medical understandings of COVID-19. Spanning nearly 20 signed and spoken languages, the volume argues that only in going beyond an Anglophone perspective can we better understand the cultural, social and political facets of the pandemic and, in turn, produce a comprehensive, efficient global response to disease management.
This book will be of interest to scholars in translation and interpreting studies, modern languages, applied linguistics, cultural studies, Deaf Studies, intercultural communication and medical humanities.
Table of Contents 1. Are We All in This Together? Piotr Blumczynski and Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) PART I: COVID-19 and the Global Construction of Language 2. Worldmaking in the Time of COVID-19: The Challenge of the Local and the Global Catherine Boyle and Renata Brandão (King’s College London, UK) 3. SARS-CoV-2 and Discursive Inoculation in France: Lessons from HIV/AIDS Loïc Bourdeau (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA) and V. Hunter Capps (SUNY Buffalo, USA) 4. War Metaphors during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Persuasion and Manipulation Patrizia Piredda (University of Oxford, UK) 5. Prophylactic Nationalism: COVID-19 in Thai Public Health Discourse Wanrug Suwanwattana (Thammasat University, Thailand) 6. COVID-19 as a Foreign Language: How France Learned the Language of the Pandemic Emilie Garrigou-Kempton (Pomona College, California, USA) PART II: Translating and Communicating COVID-19 7. Localising Science News Flows in a Global Pandemic: Translational Sourcing Practices in Flemish Reporting on COVID-19 Vaccine Studies Elisa Nelissen and Jack McMartin (KU Leuven, Belgium) 8. Community Trust in Translations of Official COVID-19 Communications in Australia: An Ethical Dilemma Between Academics and News Media Anthony Pym, Maria Karidakis, John Hajek, Robyn Woodward-Kron, Riccardo Amorati (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Bei Hu (National University of Singapore) 9. Risk and Crisis Communication during COVID-19 in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Communities: A Scoping Review of the Available Evidence Demi Krystallidou and Sabine Braun (University of Surrey, UK) 10. A Lockdown by Any Other Name: Populist Rhetoric as a Communication Strategy for COVID-19 in Duterte’s Philippines Marlon James Sales (University of Michigan, USA) 11. Prophylactic Language Use: The Case of Deaf Signers in England and Their (Lack of) Access to Government Information during the COVID-19 Pandemic Jemina Napier and Robert Adam (Herriot-Watt University, UK) 12. A Pandemic Accompanied by an Infodemic: How Do Deaf Signers in Flanders Make Informed Decisions? A Preliminary Small-scale Study Jorn Rijckaert and Karolien Gebruers (Belgium) PART III: Translational Cultural Responses to COVID-19 13. The Visual Language of COVID-19: Narrative, Data, and Emotion in Online Health Communications Kirsten Ostherr (Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA) 14. Reading COVID-19 through Dante: A Literature-Based, Bilingual, and Translational Approach to Making Sense of the Pandemic Beatrice Sica (University College London, UK) 15. COVID-19 Bandes dessinées: Reframing Medical Heroism in French-Language Graphic Novels Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) 16. Translational Futures: Notes on Ecology and Translation from the COVID-19 Crisis Marta Arnaldi (University of Oxford, UK) List of Contributors
Piotr Blumczynski is Senior Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Ubiquitous Translation (Routledge, 2016) and editor-in-chief of the journal Translation Studies. In 2022–2024, he is co-directing the research programme MISTE exploring various sites of translation and cross-cultural encounter on the island of Ireland. Steven Wilson is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France (Legenda, 2020) and has edited medical humanities-themed journal special issues on French Autopathography (2016), French Thanatology (2021) and Cultural Languages of Pain (2023).
Reviews for The Languages of COVID-19: Translational and Multilingual Perspectives on Global Healthcare
"""With its revelatory observations on language, translation and culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, from a broad geographical, multimodal and cross-disciplinary perspective, this extensive and impressive volume provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the importance of language in health crises."" – Sharon O’Brien, Dublin City University ""Never before the intricate relationships between linguistic identity, mental and physical health have been as visible as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Engaging with trust, cognitive and emotive impact, metaphorical and semantic meaning, national and transnational contexts of healthcare communication, and many subtle interconnections in between, the contributors of this volume call us to reassess language as a factor in discourses of personal, national, and global health. A necessary reading."" – Federico M. Federici, University College London ""The Languages of COVID-19 provides an eloquent demonstration of how ‘following the science’...is no longer an effective or adequate response to global health crises such as COVID-19...The volume is to be recognised as a key intervention, from the perspective of what Ostherr dubbed the translational humanities, in the area of understanding the multiple impacts of COVID-19 past, present and future...This book deserves to be widely read across a range of disciplines and fields, with its implications integrated to policy and practice."" – Charles Forsdick, University of Liverpool, The Translator"
