Writer translates DOH guidelines on COVID-19 to Bicol

‘MAGBIKOLTA’ Guidelines for suspected COVID-19 patients in Bicol by Victor Dennis Nierva. MAGBIKOL KITA FACEBOOK PAGE

LEGAZPI CITY, Albay, Philippines — Seeing a problem in effectively communicating what the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is all about to non-Tagalog or non-English speakers, a writer translated the information and graphics from health officials to Bicol for local readers to have a better grasp of the bulletins and guidelines related to the virus.

Bicol poet and cultural advocate Victor Dennis Nierva has been posting his translations of the Department of Health (DOH) coronavirus-related bulletins via his Facebook page “Magbikol Kita” (“Let’s use Bicol”) almost on a daily basis since March 12.

“I was just looking for a way to help,” Nierva told the Inquirer by phone.

It is easy to be overwhelmed with information, he said, especially since many Filipinos nowadays do not know who to turn to for reliable information.

Communication problem“In my opinion, in the middle of all this, we have a problem with communication. We do not know who to listen to. There are so many individuals talking from the government—from the President, to the spokesperson, to the DOH, to everyone,” he said partly in Tagalog.

He noted that varying sources have been shaping public opinion that are sometimes erroneous. “Fake news is proliferating because we do not have proper channels and there are no localized efforts. People have been reposting whatever they see on social media,” Nierva said.

Nierva began translating the social media posts by the DOH to Bicol after he read comments from netizens requesting that the information be translated to their regional languages so they could understand them better.

“I believe that the DOH should be the channel that we listen to, so what I did was to translate the social media cards that they upload,” Nierva added, as “everything that comes from the DOH is official.”

He also translated to Bicol the information from the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.

“I think this is not a time for public opinion on health matters … let’s listen to the experts, let’s listen to authority so that we are all on the same page,” he said.

Nierva has been translating the information to Central Bicol, a language spoken as the mother tongue of some 4 million people in the region.

Although the Bicol region has other languages, Nierva, a 40-year-old native of Camarines Sur province, said he is most comfortable with Central Bicol because it is his native language and that it is widely understood in Bicol due to its usage in Catholic Masses and the media in the region.

He said that since he started posting his translations on his Magbikol Kita Facebook page, online users who have seen them have reached out to ask if they could print the information he posted.

Nierva also encouraged translators and graphic artists from different regions to translate important information on the coronavirus to their own languages to better help people in their respective areas to fight the spread of COVID-19.