Descriptive Qualitative Analysis of the Translation of “Q&A” Section Provided by WHO Official Website during COVID 19 Pandemic: A kind of Website Localization

This paper is a descriptive qualitative analysis of the translation of “Q&A” section provided by World Health Organization (WHO) website during COVID-19 pandemic. A webpage of “Q&A” about “Children and Masks” is taken as a sample. Translation of websites, the so-called Website Localization, is mostly achieved by automated software that converts a webpage from one language to another through tools of artificial intelligence to be multilingual with post-editing by human translators. The aim of the study is to assess the nature of the translation of the website; and to evaluate whether it is pure Machine Translation (MT) or involves human editing. The study argued that it is not pure (MT), but included human editing to verify the authentication of the instructions provided. Human translation is a cognitive process based on comprehension of the Source Text (ST) and reformulation of the Target text (TT) through human mind and cognitive abilities not a computer software. In this study, the assessment to test the nature of the translation of the website is based on four standards; readability, equivalence, cultural appropriateness, and grammatical correctness of the translated text. The study concluded that the “Q&A” translated texts from English to Arabic are not achieved by computer software, but expected to be totally human achievement. Concerning WHO website, using MT is not preferred as the lack of certain information and inaccuracy may be life threating. Thus, the study presents a contribution in appreciating the WHO and confirms the trust that should be given to such organization.