{"id":5555,"date":"2017-04-26T07:38:54","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T11:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=5555"},"modified":"2020-10-01T12:49:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T16:49:23","slug":"can-foreign-languages-make-america-safer-medically-speaking-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2017\/04\/26\/can-foreign-languages-make-america-safer-medically-speaking-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Can foreign languages make America safer? Medically speaking, yes."},"content":{"rendered":"

When you think about your safety, do you think about your health?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"public<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a lot of talk in today\u2019s political climate about \u201ckeeping America safe.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0But safety can mean many things and be achieved in many ways, not just military might. Diplomats, aid workers, doctors, scientists, businessmen and beyond all contribute to this country’s security. But they don’t do it alone; their work at home and abroad hinges on their ability to communicate and collaborate with foreign counterparts. This week, we\u2019ll look at those working in global health and why their language capabilities are critical to\u00a0America’s safety.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe U.S. government and our international partners have an unprecedented opportunity to make the world \u2013 and ourselves \u2013 stronger and safer through our commitment to closer cooperation on global health issues. Helping other countries protect their own people also means greater security for Americans.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013 Tom Frieden<\/a>, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the greatest threats to the U.S. is the rapid emergence and spread of disease\u2014even abroad.<\/strong> Take the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that claimed more than 10,000 lives. Knowing that pathogens know no borders, the UN Security Council declared<\/a> the outbreak a \u201cthreat to international peace and security\u201d and unanimously called upon member states to provide assistance and resources. That resolution received a record number of co-sponsors, with 130 countries stepping forward to provide resources and staff. With that many players in the mix, it\u2019s not hard to see the need for better language capabilities\u2014medical staff, aid groups, researchers, and officials all need to communicate with their counterparts from other countries.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

International Organization for Migration Ebola treatment unit in Grand Cape Mount, Liberia (Courtesy of UNMEER on Flickr.com under CC BY-ND 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

This is not an isolated event\u2014the last decade has witnessed similar concerns with avian influenza in the U.S., MERS-CoV in the Middle East, SARS in China, and the Zika virus across Latin America, among others. Providing language training or having language professionals readily available to assist the teams researching and fighting these threats is critical to ensuring their safety and ours.<\/p>\n

Global health collaboration is not limited to disaster relief and crisis response. Scientists and researchers increasingly share their expertise and resources.<\/strong> As of 2008, one fifth<\/a> of the medical and scientific papers had international coauthors; that number grew to one-third<\/a> in 2013. This collaboration can result in new treatments, immunizations, and medicines that improve our health care system. For example, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is currently running clinical trials<\/a> for a Zika virus vaccine, which it is testing with local partners and investigators at sites in Houston, Miami, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico. Without Spanish-speaking researchers, translators, and interpreters, this research would not be feasible.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs scientists, we are all working toward the same end goal: to cure human disease. With such a lofty goal ahead of us, there is no time for researchers to stand alone as islands. Quite the opposite: our own research has shown that if we cooperate with one another and communicate effectively, two heads really are better than one.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013Jennifer Lamberts, Van Andel Research Institute<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Scientists research HIV treatment in the NIAID Vaccine Research Center Lab (Courtesy of NIAID on Flickr under CC BY 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

While English may be the dominant language of STEM and international research, that is a crutch on which we should not lean too heavily. We never know where a crisis may arise, or what breakthrough research might fall through the cracks because it isn’t being read by the right people. It\u2019s also precarious to expect non-native speakers to publish complicated studies, for fear of what might be sacrificed in translation:<\/p>\n

\u201cChinese scientists discussing the electrical conductivity of copper nanotubes in a 2007 Royal Society of Chemistry\u00a0paper<\/a>, for example, chose a rather unfortunate acronym for the subject of their study. (It rhymes with \u201crunt.\u201d) The acronym has stuck: A new study from this year in Science China, an English-language journal,\u00a0uses the shorthand<\/a>\u200a\u2014\u200ainnocuous to people who don\u2019t know English slang and amusing for culturally immersed Anglophones, but\u00a0hardly helpful for scientists wishing to be taken seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Institutions, academics, and experts already understand the need for better language capacity in global health.<\/strong> The National Institute of Health now offers resources for researchers in Spanish<\/a> and in Asian languages<\/a>, and major U.S. universities are designing degree programs and courses that emphasize languages in the context of global health. Duke University, for example, offers Voices in Global Health courses<\/a> in Arabic, French, Hindi, Mandarin, and Spanish\u2014with more languages to come. The program director highlights the importance of language and cultural competency in global health care: \u201cWe actively turn our ear to the populations we study. Instead of talking about them, we are listening to them, which greatly enriches our understanding of the issues.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

These issues\u2014outbreaks, drug-resistant illnesses, poor sanitation, and even environmental health concerns\u2014represent a great threat to the global community, which includes us. America has a vested interest in contributing to global health efforts to keep our citizens healthy and safe. To do so most effectively, local languages and cultural competency must not be an afterthought, but a thought on the tip of our tongues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our health and safety is one of the many reasons\u00a0why Transparent Language is transforming the economics of language training and fighting the government’s language deficit<\/a>. Learn more about our work and contact us.<\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"public

When you think about your safety, do you think about your health? There\u2019s been a lot of talk in today\u2019s political climate about \u201ckeeping America safe.\u201d\u00a0But safety can mean many things and be achieved in many ways, not just military might. Diplomats, aid workers, doctors, scientists, businessmen and beyond all contribute to this country’s security…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5555","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5555"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7350,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5555\/revisions\/7350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}