Community Trust in Translations of Official COVID-19 Communications in Australia

Abstract

Healthcare communication needs to be trusted if it is to be effective in informing health literacy and changing behaviours. However, when messages are translated for culturally and linguistically diverse communities in a linguistically superdiverse city, levels of trust tend to be reduced and may be adversely affected by media reports of inadequate translations. When this happened in Melbourne in 2020, an ethical dilemma was created for academics who deal with translation. Should their public voice support professional translators or should they join the press in criticising instances of poor quality? The dilemma was partly resolved when media reports helped bring about a successful change i..