Working from home for a professional free-lance translator is the daily bread and butter and therefore, including in our schedules some charity work is only a matter of time management.
‘The Age of Disruption’, a name given to the Internet revolution which progressively changed our daily lives, today seems to apply perfectly to the ‘Age of the Pandemic’, yet definitely with a much more negative connotation. But, as in T4C we have an impressive number of excellent volunteer professionals (translators, interpreters, doctors, IT experts, legal professionals, videomakers, and other volunteer workers) and, as we have had the opportunity to say in March 2017 that ‘charity work does not follow market rules’ [Buri, at the 6th International Conference on PSIT, Universidad de Alcala de Henares], this moment of global disruptive changes has become an opportunity.
On the eve of the Coronavirus outbreak, we complied with our mission, i.e. translating medical files of severely ill children. A few days after evidence of the pandemic reached Europe, we had the opportunity to collaborate with top MD specialists and remarkable scientists as Professor Corrado Moretti, President of UENPS [Union of European Neonatal and Perinatal Societies] and Professor Walter M. Bonivento from the INFN and CERN.
We launched alerts and called on mother tongue professionals and editors from the T4C data base and promptly translated the recommendations, endorsed by UENPS, and drafted in collaboration with notable experts on “Breastfeeding and SARS-CoV-2 Infection” regarding issues relating to infection during pregnancy and the possible transmission of the infection from mother to child before, during and after childbirth. It was a great challenge to offer our time and skills to translate these international guidelines into Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish, which are now on the Union’s website with the translator’s name. In the meantime, another group of top professional translators and interpreters offered their voices to provide the English text and audio to two of Dr.Marco Squicciarini’s videos on the Heimlich Maneuvers to clear children’s airways blocked by a foreign object. We are honored to include, among our Covid19 translation files, the collaboration with the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, as we provided the translation into Italian, French, German and Spanish of a background report and news release regarding the international project of a ventilator to be produced and readily marketed, in view of the worldwide scarcity of such devices.
Worthy of mention is the constant precious contact between these distinguished scientists and the translators and interpreters and, above all, the humanity, professional support and insight of the founder and President of T4C, Dr. Marco Squicciarini.
This has been our experience in the first 35 days of confinement and social distancing, We are ready to face more challenges with our passion for translating and contribute to saving lives, thus confirming the mission of #Translators4Children #savingliveswithwords
Maria Rosaria Buri – Translators4Children Vice-President and Professional Development Manager
April 15, 2020