Digital Assessment of Italian-English Translations of COVID-19 Reports

Abstract

The present work is concerned with assessing the quality of the English language in official reports published by the Italian Higher Health Institute and released through its website during the COVID-19 pandemic. The reports are the result of a translation from Italian into English, on which a quantitative analysis was carried out to assess the total number of errors, as well as their accuracy, adequacy, and readability. A qualitative evaluation was also undertaken focusing on the cohesive, lexical, and syntactic features of the reports, thus highlighting mistranslations. The quantitative analysis, carried out using the TAUS DQF system, evidenced a mean accuracy of 3 and a mean adequacy of 2. The Grammarly software counted a mean number of 109 errors. The Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, calculated using the Content Analysis SEO Tool, yielded a mean reading ease of 38 and a mean school grade of 8. The publication of official health reports addressed to the general public should be committed to improving lives and increasing the social impact of science. On the other hand, official health reports that are aimed at a specialized medical audience should respond to all the rules and norms of that specific language community. In both cases, the reports assessed in the present investigation seem to fail in their communicative function due to their linguistic ineffectiveness.