The Languages of COVID-19

Piotr Blumczynski is Senior Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Ubiquitous Translation (Routledge, 2016) and editor-in-chief of the journal Translation Studies. In 2022–2024, he is co-directing the research programme MISTE exploring various sites of translation and cross-cultural encounter on the island of Ireland. Steven Wilson is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France (Legenda, 2020) and has edited medical humanities-themed journal special issues on French Autopathography (2016), French Thanatology (2021) and Cultural Languages of Pain (2023).

Table of Contents

1. Are We All in This Together?

Piotr Blumczynski and Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)

PART I: COVID-19 and the Global Construction of Language

2. Worldmaking in the Time of COVID-19: The Challenge of the Local and the Global

Catherine Boyle and Renata Brandão (King’s College London, UK)

3. SARS-CoV-2 and Discursive Inoculation in France: Lessons from HIV/AIDS

Loïc Bourdeau (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA) and V. Hunter Capps (SUNY Buffalo, USA)

4. War Metaphors during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Persuasion and Manipulation

Patrizia Piredda (University of Oxford, UK)

5. Prophylactic Nationalism: COVID-19 in Thai Public Health Discourse

Wanrug Suwanwattana (Thammasat University, Thailand)

6. COVID-19 as a Foreign Language: How France Learned the Language of the Pandemic

Emilie Garrigou-Kempton (Pomona College, California, USA)

PART II: Translating and Communicating COVID-19

7. Localising Science News Flows in a Global Pandemic: Translational Sourcing Practices in Flemish Reporting on COVID-19 Vaccine Studies

Elisa Nelissen and Jack McMartin (KU Leuven, Belgium)

8. Community Trust in Translations of Official COVID-19 Communications in Australia: An Ethical Dilemma Between Academics and News Media

Anthony Pym, Maria Karidakis, John Hajek, Robyn Woodward-Kron, Riccardo Amorati (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Bei Hu (National University of Singapore)

9. Risk and Crisis Communication during COVID-19 in Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Communities: A Scoping Review of the Available Evidence

Demi Krystallidou and Sabine Braun (University of Surrey, UK)

10. A Lockdown by Any Other Name: Populist Rhetoric as a Communication Strategy for COVID-19 in Duterte’s Philippines

Marlon James Sales (University of Michigan, USA)

11. Prophylactic Language Use: The Case of Deaf Signers in England and Their (Lack of) Access to Government Information during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Jemina Napier and Robert Adam (Herriot-Watt University, UK)

12. A Pandemic Accompanied by an Infodemic: How Do Deaf Signers in Flanders Make Informed Decisions? A Preliminary Small-scale Study

Jorn Rijckaert and Karolien Gebruers (Belgium)

PART III: Translational Cultural Responses to COVID-19

13. The Visual Language of COVID-19: Narrative, Data, and Emotion in Online Health Communications

Kirsten Ostherr (Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA)

14. Reading COVID-19 through Dante: A Literature-Based, Bilingual, and Translational Approach to Making Sense of the Pandemic

Beatrice Sica (University College London, UK)

15. COVID-19 Bandes dessinées: Reframing Medical Heroism in French-Language Graphic Novels

Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)

16. Translational Futures: Notes on Ecology and Translation from the COVID-19 Crisis

Marta Arnaldi (University of Oxford, UK)

List of Contributors