COVID-19 ‘doesn’t check documentation status.’ More info needed for non-English speakers.
Like many others, Urban County Council member Jennifer Reynolds is impressed with Gov. Andy Beshear’s daily COVID-19 briefings, where Virginia Moore interprets his words into American Sign Language for Kentucky’s deaf and hard of hearing population.
Now she’d like to see some more interpreting into Spanish for the tens of thousands of Kentuckians who need that vital information about the pandemic, too.
“I was an interpreter for several years, and to me, all of us in government are doing a disservice if we’re not including them (the Hispanic community) in the messaging,” said Reynolds, a Spanish speaker whose district includes the largely Hispanic Cardinal Valley neighborhood. “If a whole portion of your community is not getting this message then that’s a huge problem and it’s not safe.”
Reyolds said she worked for two weeks with the governor’s office to get the state’s official COVID-19 website to put up a link that translates the daily briefings into Spanish. Since then, the site has also linked to audio translations off the briefings in French, Hindi, Russian and Chinese as well. They were put together by the community radio station RadioLex which received grant funding from the Coronavirus Response Fund (a joint effort of United Way of the Bluegrass and Blue Grass Community Foundation) to serve non-English speaking Kentuckians during the COVID-19 crisis both through broadcast programming.
“In a time of confusion and misinformation, it’s important for citizens to be able to access information they trust in the language they best understand,” says RADIOLEX general manager, Mark Royse.
Ideally, Reynolds said, the governor’s briefings would have simultaneous Spanish translation on the bottom of the screen because Spanish speakers make up the largest non English-speaking group in the state. The census says Kentucky’s Hispanic population is about 3.8 percent but experts estimate it’s much larger. In Lexington alone, non-English speakers make up 25 percent of the population; Spanish speakers are about 60 percent of that group, according to city counts. The census puts the Hispanic population at closer to 7.2 percent of the city.
On Monday, she sent Beshear a letter begging him to do more.
“During a statewide pandemic there are those who are missing out on vital information which could sabotage all the work that the rest of KY is doing,” she wrote. “I am begging you to please include, in all your press conferences, a statement and slide of where people can go for information in other languages, which can now be the state website. As an elected official I have received countless complaints and comments about this from the international and the concerned Kentucky community. I urge you to take action.”
WKYT just started a daily COVID-19 briefing in Spanish.
In Fayette County, six percent of COVID-19 patients are Hispanic, about 12 cases, but officials think that count is underrepresented because of fears about possible arrest or deportation. On Monday, Beshear said Hispanics make up about 5.6 percent of cases statewide.
“We are a quasi governmental agency and people in our Spanish speaking community have indicated they may not trust coming here,” said Fayette Health Department spokesman Kevin Hall. “But we treat everyone regardless of their status in America because a disease like this doesn’t check documentation status.”
Hall said social distancing prevents more community education about COVID-19 because you can’t go into businesses for face to face interaction. They are depending more on Spanish language pamphlets posted in businesses and neighborhoods.
Juan Cervantes owns a grocery store and a bakery in Cardinal Valley. He said there are numerous pamphlets, and his employees have tried to educate customers.
“I think we are getting most of the information,” he said.
Spanish speakers are not the only people who may miss out. At the Kentucky Refugee Ministries in Lexington, several hundred clients would usually be at the office taking English classes. Now, said executive director Mary Cobb, they are calling people directly, while trying to information about COVID-19 translated in videos.
“It is a challenge if you’re a newcomer in a new place, and there’s a lot of information pouring out all the time, and you’re not sure what sources to listen to,” Cobb said. “We’re doing out best to try to interpret and translate that for clients.”
KRM has translated the state’s social distancing graphics into Swahili, Ukrainian, Nepali, Arabic, and Kinyarwanda and Bembe, two Congolese languages. They put graphics and videos on their Facebook page.
“I think everybody across the board wants the information to get circulated, everyone is doing everything they can,” Cobb said. “It’s a huge endeavor to do an hour and a half briefing in another language.”
Government officials everywhere are overwhelmed. Nonetheless, Lexington and Louisville are filled with multilingual people who would be glad to do whatever they can to help the governor’s office get more information out. As Hall said, COVID-19 knows no racial, ethnic or status boundaries; the more everyone knows, the more everyone can do to stop its spread.
This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 10:48 AM.
