Cultural translation and the interpretation of Covid-19 risks among London's migrant communities

One of the key responses to the Covid-19 crisis is change in individuals' behaviour. The success of social distancing, hand-washing, or the wearing of masks/face coverings all depend on individual members of the community adopting these measures. This change of behaviour relies on accurate, reliable and accessible information about Covid-19 and a good understanding of risks associated with Covid-19 among all members of the community. For this, language and understanding of culture are both crucial. This project will investigate public health discourses related to Covid-19 among linguistically diverse communities in London, focussing on languages of Africa and Asia. London is a highly multilingual community - there are more than 200 languages spoken in London's primary schools. London's multilingual and multicultural communities have access to, and rely on, discourses and information about Covid-19 in several languages. Information provided in English by UK media, government agencies, local authorities etc, is augmented by information provided in the community language and from outside of the UK from official channels as well as social media. London's migrant, ethnic, and minority communities are thus engaged in translating and interpreting Covid-19 information from different sources and often adopting a variety of perspectives, and this will inform their understanding of and their behavioural response to the pandemic. The current project will investigate how information about Covid-19 and associated risks flows and is translated in a range of London's diverse linguistic repertoire of languages such as Standard Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Turkish, Urdu, Swahili, and Yoruba. Our goal is to understand how London's migrant/ethnic/minority communities receive information about Covid-19 and how that information and its cultural context impact on their reactions and everyday practice in this environment. For example, Japanese speakers in London have access to at least two free community newspapers and the Japanese embassy sent translations of Boris Johnson's key speech introducing the first lock-down and various Covid-19 related information to registered Japanese citizens. The UK-internal perspective on addressing the Covid-19 crisis is thus contrasted with external perspectives, which are often critical of the UK's approach. In order to understand these multilingual and multicultural discourses, the project will investigate five key questions: (1) How London's multilingual and multicultural communities interpret and translate the information they receive from different sources, including information from their home countries and their local communities, and how this impacts on their understanding of Covid-19 and their social behaviour (2) To what extent communities' understanding is coloured by their different cultural, linguistic and social backgrounds and their processes of cultural translation (3) To what extent some communities are at higher risk of contracting or transmitting Covid-19 because they do not understand relevant public health advice (4) How information about Covid-19 can be better communicated or translated for London's diverse linguistic and cultural communities (5) What lessons can be learned from this pandemic for public health communication in the future The project will draw on the extensive language and cultural expertise at SOAS University of London in collaboration with public agencies and community representatives. It will collect, document, and synthesize individual accounts from multilingual community members in London, information in the target languages published in London, and information available to community members from their (historical) home countries, their governments and on social media.