Pandemic was endurance test for Swiss multilingualism, according to study

Pandemic was an endurance test for multilingualism, according to study Keystone-SDA

During the coronavirus pandemic, information on prevention and hygiene rules was translated much more frequently in Switzerland than content on financial support services. This is the conclusion of a new study by the University of Fribourg.

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The pandemic has been an endurance test for multilingualism, wrote the University of Fribourg (Unifr) in a press release on Wednesday. The federal authorities, in particular the Federal Office of Public Health, translated texts into no fewer than 26 languages. This includes sign language.

While health information was published and made accessible in as many languages as possible, information on financial assistance, such as compensation for loss of earnings, was only published in the number of languages required by law.

The research project “Multilingualism in a health crisis situation” is based on the evaluation of published information from the first year of the pandemic (2020/2021) and on interviews with 90 people who were involved in translation work.

The multilingual services and products provided and disseminated digitally by the federal government and other institutions were also not always easy to find and not accessible to everyone, which is why civil society mediation work was essential.

Switzerland, with its four national languages, already had legal regulations on the language services required by the federal administration before the pandemic, as well as the corresponding resources, structures and experience, as the researchers explained in the report. Around 450 people in the centralised and decentralised language services provide translations into the three official languages, Romansh and English, mostly based on original German texts.

However, according to Unifr, non-professional volunteer translators were also deployed during the pandemic. These were mostly people with a migration background and civil society organisations that worked in the background to ensure that information was accessible.

Adapted from French by DeepL/jdp

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