Kääntämistietoisuus koronakäännöksiä koskevissa laatukäsityksissä

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several organizations in Finland produced multilingual information targeted at the migrant populations. To assess these translation policies and practices, we conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with persons involved in the purchasing, producing, editing, and dissemination of translated information targeted at migrants in 11 organizations including, for example, three municipalities of the greater Helsinki region, the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, and three NGOs.
One of the issues raised by several interviewees was the poor quality of translations, and many interviewees also gave alleged reasons for it. In this paper, we analyze the interviewees’ comments on translation quality (and why it matters) as reflecting their understanding of translations and translating. To capture the many facets of this understanding, we propose the notion of translation awareness – a parallel to language awareness – and discuss how this awareness (or the lack thereof) influenced the translation practices in organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.