Lost in translation: Winnipeg woman wants gov’ts to put out COVID-19 info in more languages
Posted September 3, 2020 4:05 pm.
Last Updated September 3, 2020 4:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WINNIPEG – Despite students heading back to school in Manitoba in less than a week, there is still confusion and questions for some parents and caregivers who speak English as their second language.
Lelia Castro helps manage a Filipino group online with more than 46,000 members. She says the Filipino community she works with has serious concerns about sending their kids back to school.
“We’ve never seen any information in Tagalog,” she told CityNews Winnipeg.
Tagalog is the first language for most Filipino immigrants, and she says it would be helpful if the government could provide translated COVID-19 updates and return to school plans in Tagalog for the Filipino community.
“I believe it’s going to help just to remove the language barrier.”
A 2019 Canadian census showed over 800,000 Filipinos call Canada home with about 10 per cent of them living in Manitoba.
Castro says the majority of Canadian Filipino immigrants do speak English and generally understand the language. However, given heightened emotions around the pandemic and evolving information being shared by the government, Castro says some instructions are not being fully understood by everyone.
“Putting that out (in Tagalog) would greatly help.”
Castro decided it was important for her to personally provide information to the community and conduct a survey among her Filipino members group to ask how they felt about sending their kids back to school based on the current provincial directive.
“The majority of people do not want the kids to go back to school,” she said.
CityNews reached out to the provincial government to ask if it plans on offering translated material on COVID-19 for immigrant communities and have yet to receive a response.
