The Importance of Cross-Lingual Translation in Preventing a Regional Ebola Resurgence

The program was implemented by the US NGO JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI) as part of the Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) project. The program's primary goal was to facilitate communication and coordination between governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the region, where communities cross national borders. The ETP&SS program faced a significant challenge in communicating across countries with different languages. English was the primary language for program communications, which presented a barrier to working with countries that spoke French. To overcome this challenge, APC's Guinea office and JSI's home office shared research results, best practices, and lessons to improve prevention and treatment efforts among representatives of the three countries. The APC team facilitated bilingual communication between the Anglophone and Francophone teams during the ETP&SS program. Between December 2016 and March 2018, APC organized four sub-regional meetings for country-level officials, international organizations, and survivor association leaders from the three countries to reflect on post-Ebola challenges and prevention. The meetings were crucial for revising project strategies and national policies based on cross-country exchanges. APC staff in Guinea and the US translated meeting materials, including agendas, invitations, presentations, and travel guidance, to ensure that all participants could fully comprehend the proceedings. Simultaneous translation services were also arranged during plenary sessions, and bilingual staff support was provided during group work to enable direct communication among participants. The ETP&SS program provided workshop materials to translators in advance to prepare them to communicate specialized medical content. This step was essential for accurate translation, as it is difficult to find translators who are well-versed in technical specialties such as public health and clinical medicine. The Guinea office spent significantly more staff time and resources on translation efforts because it was responsible for translating internal and external project documents into English and for translating documents from the other countries into French for its own staff and counterparts at the Ministry of Health. Phone calls and status updates with project headquarters were often conducted in English, and Guinea staff had to translate these to French. The Guinea team's translation efforts were a major contributor to the success of the regional meetings and all communication activities between the Guinea ETP&SS program and those of Sierra Leone and Liberia. The ETP&SS program's continuous efforts to overcome the French-English language barrier were crucial for meeting its objectives, particularly the sharing of lessons and research results among the three countries most-affected by Ebola. The program's success highlights the importance of cross-lingual translation in preventing a regional Ebola resurgence. Future implementing partners of multi-lingual programs should consider the diverse types of project documents and deliverables and allot adequate staff or outside expert time and funding for translation. The ETP&SS program's experience demonstrates the importance of continuous communication and information-sharing during the post-Ebola period for preventing subsequent Ebola virus outbreaks in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The program's success also underscores the need for implementing partners to consider the language barriers that may exist in the region and to allocate adequate resources for translation and communication.