Responsible Use of GenAI Technologies in Health Communication: Translating the Covid-19 Pandemic

In multicultural societies, effective interpreting and translation services are vital for ensuring community members to have access to services of government departments and agencies. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for swift multilingual translations to make culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) members of a community socially inclusive by facilitating communication in every aspect of life including healthcare settings. This context underscores the potential of advanced AI-based translation technologies such as ChatGPT in addressing the challenges under the unprecedented circumstances. The aim of this qualitative research was to investigate the affordances of AI-driven chatbots in providing effective translations to meet the needs of CALD members in Australia. Data collection involved an in-depth and comparative analysis of the translations of an official document from English into Turkish about the Covid-19 pandemic, including one human translation and three iterations by ChatGPT-4, prompted in accordance with Reiss's text-type functions - informative, expressive, and vocative. To ensure rigor, the translation process using ChatGPT-4 was captured via screen recording. The findings indicate that AI chatbots, when utilized by professional translators, can enhance translation quality and effectiveness. This research holds significance for industry professionals and researchers in translation and interpreting, offering insights and raising an awareness of some potential limitations and new directions.