Corona fever leaves us specialist translators and interpreters cold

Since January 2020, the continuously spreading new type of coronavirus, which originally came from China, is leaving people in Europe breathless. As the virus has meanwhile been classified as a pandemic by the WHO, politicians around the world are increasingly taking radical measures to prevent further cases of the disease. However, at the moment, another phenomenon that could have dangerous consequences just like those of the coronavirus can be observed among the European population: excessive panic! Historically speaking, of course, this is nothing new: the raging swine flu in 2009 and 2010 also made a pig’s ear of everything, and the global outbreak of the avian flu from 2004 onwards spoilt many people’s joy of flying. Now, the coronavirus has become the crowning highlight of all: scheduled major events such as trade fairs, concerts or football matches are being cancelled, and a growing number of citizens are emptying grocery shelves in supermarkets on a large scale for fear of an impending apocalypse or even breaking into hospitals to illegally acquire disinfectants and protective masks for themselves. Since the causes and effects of the new disease have not yet been clearly identified, and thus every individual has limited possibilities of procuring information, such reactions inevitably raise the following question: is the coronavirus really a reason to put yourself in quarantine? We from AP Fachübersetzungen have a decisive answer to this: no!

People's disproportionately strong feelings of panic because they might contract corona or other viruses is, in fact, counterproductive since fears and worries are always obstacles to logical thinking and block carefully considered decisions. This could harbour serious risks since “fake news” (deliberately false information) about the coronavirus, which no one should fall victim to, is currently circulating in certain media. As a doctor and thus an expert on the subject says in an article in the German news magazine “Focus” of 09/03/2020, “The corona panic is more dangerous than the virus itself”. Some friends of the employees at AP Fachübersetzungen are doctors as well and can only confirm this statement. It is important for everyone to closely analyze the known facts: at the moment, it is much more likely to contract the flu than corona. But neither have schools been closed so far due to the flu nor have several countries called states of emergency - despite the rate of mortality due to the flu being a dozen times as high as that due to the “poor” coronavirus.

Above all, it is important – as usual in difficult situations – to remain calm and act sensibly by following the recommended rules of hygiene as always (e.g. washing your hands regularly or coughing and sneezing into the crook of your arm instead of your hand). However, what raises our concern is the fact that the global sales of soap and toilet paper increased sharply after the corona outbreak had become public. This gives us reason to believe that hygiene may not have been one of the top priorities for the majority of the population.

Since we, the fearless translators and interpreters from the Nuremberg specialist translation agency AP Fachübersetzungen, have already overcome many crises of different kinds by implementing very successful strategies, we are also perfectly equipped for tackling the corona crisis with the approach mentioned above. We continue to offer our high-quality specialist translations in medicine, pharmacy, law and technology for Russian, German, English, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian and a broad range of other languages to our national and international clients. And, of course, we are available at any time for interpreting services that have luckily not been cancelled up to now. We equally maintain personal contact with our existing and new clients and face the crisis defiantly, courageously and in a very relaxed manner due to the current factual situation. After all, the swine and avian flu epidemics did not lead to the end of the world or human extinction. But we do have one afterthought concerning the future: maybe suddenly – e.g. in the USA – a remedy for the coronavirus will be found, by chance shortly before this year’s presidential elections on 3 November 2020!