TRANSLATED RESOURCES
In addition to general and institutional information for individuals, businesses, community organisations, public service professionals and so on, the website offers multi-lingual information about areas falling within the portfolio of Human Services (social security benefits, training, employment, families, pensions, disability, youth and students, emergency services, income management, social work services, etc.). The information is available in a large number of languages and language varieties, including Amharic, Arabic, Assyrian, Bengali, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese, Chin (Haka), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dinka, Dutch, Faili, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hazaragi, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Karen, Khmer, Kirundi, Korean, Kurmanji, Kurdish, Lao, Latvian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Nepali, Norwegian, Pashto, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Russian, Samoan, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovene, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Tigrinya, Tongan, Turkish, Urdu, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The multilingual resources include not only written texts, but also audio and audiovisual materials.
The NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service provides a number of services relating to communication with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Among these services, MHCS manages healthcare translations and provides advice to healthcare professionals, researchers and organisations working with or interested in reaching CALD communities. Its website features, among other things, multilingual print and audiovisual resources, community profiles, policies and guidelines. The following is an example of the guidelines available:
The guidelines provided by the New South Wales Multicultural Health Communication Service (Australia) include useful tips and checklists intended to assist commissioners and producers of multilingual resources at different stages of the production process. For instance, planning steps include a recommendation that healthcare authorities and services need to consider ‘the most appropriate way to convey the information, especially if there are possibly culturally sensitive or controversial issues involved in that health resource’. This leads to another recommendation relating to collaboration and consultation with multicultural health offices, the Community Relations Commission, or community organisations working with the target audience. The guidelines also address aspects such as funding, design, contents, selection of target languages and language appropriateness. ‘The languages selected for translation need to reflect the community requirements of the intended audience. This does not always mean that all resources should be translated into all of the major languages. Consideration needs to be given to the particular relevance of the information to various language communities, as well as the English language proficiency of the specific target groups’.
This website allows you to search for resources by language. Languages available include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Dari, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish and others. Resources are related to labour and, among other topics, cover employee protection, worker rights, health and safety at work, workplace pains and strains, and so on.
Under the motto ‘Information you need, in the language you want’, this website offers information on immigration, education, housing, work, health and legal advice in languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil and Urdu.
According to the background information available on the website, the Multicultural Change in Health Services Delivery Project concluded that there was a need for coordination of efforts to respond to translation needs in a more effective manner. Translated healthcare resources were collected from the twenty-two healthcare organisations participating in the project. The review of the materials revealed ‘critical translation errors’ as well as duplicated translation work undertaken or commissioned by different organisations. Subsequently, the project Translated Materials in Health Care -a Demonstration Project- was launched to improve standards and procedures for the translation of healthcare resources. As part of this endeavour, the Multilingual Health Education website disseminates information and advice on healthcare and domestic violence in a number of languages, including French, Farsi (Persian), Hindi, Korean, Punjabi, Tagalog and Japanese. The website also includes external links to other Canadian and international healthcare resources.
The Centre is the largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital in Canada. Its services and activities include clinical care, research, policy development and awareness and education relating to mental health and addiction. Its website offers information in different languages about issues such as mental health, stress, alcohol or gambling. In addition to English, resources are available in French, Amharic, Chinese, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Hindi, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Somali, Spanish and Urdu, among other languages
Elections Canada (the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer) ‘is an independent, non-partisan agency that reports directly to Parliament’. Its mission consists of ‘[e]nsuring that Canadians can exercise their democratic rights to vote and be a candidate’. In January 2015, the website above was announcing that Elections Canada was planning to make available a voter information guide in twenty-nine heritage languages: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Cambodian, Cantonese, Croatian, Farsi (Persian), German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog (Filipino), Tamil, Turkish and Ukrainian.
GovHK was launched in 2007 to make information more accessible to the community. It is a quite comprehensive portal providing information mainly in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English, but it also features the Multi-language Platform, which offers links to information about different areas of government and different aspects of community life in seven languages other than Chinese and English (Hindi, Indonesian, Nepali, Urdu, Tagalog, Thai and Vietnamese). The information and links are organised by user groups (e.g. residents, businesses, non-residents, etc.). The areas covered include general information about Hong Kong, immigration, public housing, taxes, employment, education, healthcare and so on.
The website of Nagano Prefecture (Japan) offers information and advice on daily life as well as a guide for newcomers to the local community in a number of languages (English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Indonesian, Tagalog and Thai). Some other Japanese prefectures also provide multi-lingual information.
The website of the South African Department of Justice and Constitutional Development includes a number of brochures on different legal and social issues, including, for example, children’s rights, cyber bullying and sexting, harmful religious practices, and domestic violence. Only a few of these are available in languages other than English (Sepedi, Sesotho, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, Zulu, Setswana, siSwati and Afrikaans).
The website of the local government of the capital of Spain offers a number of resources, including a First Steps Guide for newly arrived migrants, which aims to inform this group, in their own language, about institutional systems, administrative processes, as well as the resources available. The website also includes healthcare leaflets which have been translated into several languages (e.g. Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, French and Romanian), as well as basic bilingual dictionaries and pictionaries intended to encourage inter-community interaction and mutual knowledge.
Resources available include healthcare-related consumer information for different audiences and ‘minority health resources’ for both consumers and health professionals. The website also features translated FDA publications in languages such as Arabic, French Creole, Polish, Bengali, Cambodian, Chamorro, Chinese, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Marshalese, Tagalog, Taglish, Tongan, Urdu and Vietnamese.
The National Asian Pacific Centre advocates on behalf of aging Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Its website provides general information and healthcare resources for aged persons in English and other languages relevant to these communities (e.g. Chinese, Khmer, Korean, Samoan, Tagalog, Tongan and Vietnamese).
This website offers information in English and Spanish on various topics, including local and national institutions and representatives, social benefits, consumer protection, public safety, food safety, education, employment, environment, travel, official documents, immigration and asylum.
Information provided on this website covers immigration, citizenship, work, family, and adoption, among other topics. Like the previous website, this resource is available both in English and Spanish, given the significant presence of Hispanic heritage Americans and migrants. In addition, it offers a ‘Welcome to the United States’ guide in other languages such as Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Tagalog, Urdu and Vietnamese. The Guide covers information and advice areas such as the history and institutions of the United States, rights and responsibilities of citizens and residents, settlement, social security, childcare, education and language learning, safety, and national public holidays.