What is it about?
This article highlights why planning multilingual pandemic communication in advance really matters. It takes a closer look at how Finnish cities used their websites to inform residents about changes to local services during the coronavirus outbreak—and which languages they chose to do it in. Along the way, it explores how translation practices connect to broader translation policies.
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Why is it important?
Information on the websites was often hard to find because there was no clear place for it. Updates were not always current, and some details were outdated. Translations of announcements appeared at different times. For the sake of equality, it would be important that, for example, registering for vaccinations could happen at the same time regardless of language. Planning how translations are sourced, checked, and published online should ideally have been done before the pandemic began.
Perspectives
I hope our article invites readers to reflect on why crisis communication should be planned in a way that truly takes urban multilingualism into account. Communication strategies often state the goal of reaching all residents and providing translations when needed, but they rarely spell out concrete steps for making this happen.
Tuija Kinnunen
Tampereen yliopisto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Multilingual accessibility of websites in relation to translation policies, Translation in Society, November 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/tris.23017.kin.
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