Importance of language and COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

Importance of language and COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

Amid Covid-19, vaccines have been playing an important role in saving lives and the significance of vaccine distribution have been increased due to COVID-19 pandemic. Having access to health and medical services is important to all, and language access is unquestionably important.

Why language access is important?

Researchers have found that foreign population in Korea has COVID-19 cases due to language barrier. Experts are worried because language barriers that foreign workers face make it harder to understand the public service announcements regarding public health guidelines including important things such as wearing masks, social distancing or even protocols to follow to avoid contacting the virus.

Language barrier and vaccine distribution

For complex medical words or terminologies, language barriers become even more difficult to break through. In Korea, many of foreign workers faced difficulties as they try to book for COVID-19 vaccines as booking systems are only written in Korean. Booking via call is even more difficult due to language barriers. Not only booking systems for COVID-19, but also, information regarding adverse events following vaccination was not translated and delivered to many foreign workers and thus, populations of non-Korean speakers had more cases of COVID-19 than Korean speaking communities. Experts have claimed that it is highly due to language barriers that foreign workers face because public health guidelines regarding COVID-19 are not properly translated in other languages.

How translation services from I’M Translation/ISiS Korea can help

Translating medical terminology or context including vaccine distribution can be very confusing to many. Thus, machine translation tools or online translation tools such as google translate would just make everything even more confusing. It may lead to mistranslations as translating medical information is way more complex than any other translations.

At I’M Translation, we can connect you with human translators who are experts in all fields in your required languages. We have over 30+ languages available on our platform and we are flexible and available regardless of the language pair, topic, and time zone in any medical translations. Please visit us at www.imtranslation.com and www.isiskorea.com/eng to request a free legal translation quote. Thank you!