Muscat, The British publishing house Palgrave Macmillan published a book titled “Language as a Social Determinant of Health: Translating and Interpreting the Covid-19 Pandemic”.

Dr. Abdul Gabbar Al Sharafi, Associate Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), contributed to the books with a study he conducted on Oman’s experience in managing the Covid-19 pandemic linguistically.

In his study, Al Sharafi discussed the mechanism of delivering messages related to the management of the pandemic to various communities in Oman, and the role of translation in relaying the messages from Arabic to other languages, especially in English.

While analyzing the role of translation in managing this crisis, Al Sharafi highlighted the linguistic diversity that the Sultanate of Oman enjoys in terms of the local languages spoken in the country such as Balushi, Kumzari, Harsusi, Jabali and languages which constitute 38.9% of the total population such as Hindi, Turkish, Bengali and other languages.

The study aimed to adress the confidence-building strategies that the authorities concerned in the Sultanate of Oman relied on to manage this crisis.

The study’s results indicate that the strategies of transparency and reaching the necessary information was clearly evident for Arab recipients, while the same messages were less transparent for recipients who did not speak in Arabic.

Source: Oman News Agency