Photo By Joseph Siemandel | A Guardsmen with the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion conducts translation work...... read more read more
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Soldiers with the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion took on a mission during February’s drill weekend, translating life safety and preparedness messages to help people who don’t speak English figure out best practices for avoiding the novel coronavirus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been closely monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) first identified in Hubei Province, China. A patient in Snohomish County returned from Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, where an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus has been ongoing since December. This patient has since been released from the hospital and is at home, being monitored by the Snohomish Health District.
The state has no evidence the virus is spreading in Washington state and the risk to the general public is low. But the incident continues to spur questions from the public in Washington state. And not everyone speaks English. The Washington Emergency Management Division reached out to the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion to help with translations.
More than a dozen linguists worked with the state Department of Health on messaging.
“We completed a total of nine translations which was more than we originally had planned for,” said Sgt. Sharon Gold, the state’s Command Language Program Management coordinator. “Our Guardsmen are always excited to take on these types of missions because they can help our state.”
Guardsmen translated fact sheets about the virus in Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Thai, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Korean. These fact sheets provide basic information regarding how you can prevent getting the virus.
“We knew the importance of this mission once it came to us,” said Lt. Col. Teresa Wenner, Commander of the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion. ““When we were asked to support it, we were more than willing to contribute our time and talents, often linguists are mobilized and making impacts globally, but as citizen soldiers this was an opportunity to support our local communities.”
The 341st is currently undertaking a translation mission for the Emergency Management Division’s Limited English Proficiency program that would translate messages regarding a number of different emergency situations.
| Date Taken: | 02.13.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 02.13.2020 11:06 |
| Story ID: | 362961 |
| Location: | CAMP MURRAY, WA, US |
| Web Views: | 145 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Guard unit uses language skills to translate safety message regarding coronavirus, by Joseph Siemandel, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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