There are a lot of people using the National Health Service in the UK and other associated services for whom English is not their first language. The production of information in different languages about the services available, in the form of leaflets, brochures, websites and audio tapes, has become essential in order to provide a level playing field for everyone.

A little while ago, Comms was asked to quote for a 15 language project for a Government department. The project was given to another agency as we were slightly more expensive, and the department concerned had a policy, at that time, of having to take the cheapest quote. The translations were done by the other agency, and then printed. Tens of thousands of copies were distributed to pharmacies throughout the UK. It was only as a result of public feedback that the inaccuracy of the translations was discovered. Every single leaflet had to be recalled.

Translation in this area requires special sensitivity

For translating projects such as these, we only use linguists who are resident in this country, because it is essential that they have knowledge of the services about which they are translating the information. A lot of the people, for whom this material is meant, may be very vulnerable and may not have been in the UK for very long, so they don’t know what services are available to them. All of the linguists that we use in this sector are sensitive to these issues. It has taken us a long time, and entailed much research, in order to build a team of people to whom we can turn for these projects.

Some of the languages that we have covered for these types of project include the following: Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Croatian, Farsi, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Kurmanji, Portuguese, Punjabi, Serbian, Somali, Sorani, Spanish, Turkish and Urdu.

If you would like a quotation, please let us have the following information: