Speak My Language!: The Important Role of Community Translation in the Promotion of Health Literacy

In this chapter, we explore the role of community translation in the promotion of health literacy in Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ) as a culturally and linguistically diverse society, while also briefly touching on the earliest community translator and interpreter training and service provision in the 1990s. The chapter presents two approaches or initiatives to community translation as part of health promotion efforts, providing glimpses into the different experiences that prompted this approach. We explore what we might need to do to achieve a ‘just right’ outcome when engaged in community translation for the purposes of health literacy and how this should involve the end users of the translations. The first approach is focused on the analysis of issues encountered in the revision of community translations into Samoan. The second approach presents an initiative to foster health literacy via visuals and voice-overs.