As Singapore battles the Covid-19 outbreak, TODAY’s Heroes Unmasked series highlights those who are doing their bit to spread kindness and compassion during this period. In this instalment, we speak to some volunteers who have dedicated time and effort to lowering migrant workers’ communication barriers. 

SINGAPORE — For the past two weeks, Dr Somrita Ganchoudhuri has been conducting short live streams on Facebook in Bengali dialects, simple broadcasts to keep the Bangladeshi migrant worker community up to date on the latest developments in Singapore.

The 33-year-old research consultant, who holds a doctorate in health communications, began doing this because she realised there were not enough avenues through which the community could talk about Covid-19-related topics and their mental health. 

She is one of several individuals in Singapore who have come forward to offer their linguistic skills to help migrant workers who have not only been caught up in the thick of the Covid-19 outbreak but borne the brunt of its impact.

BENGALI LIVE STREAMS 

Dr Somrita has started out fairly simply, with live streams of five to 10 minutes each, featuring her talking about issues such as the latest announcements made by the Government related to Covid-19 or interviews with migrant workers in Singapore. 

Always, these live streams are conducted in the dialects that are spoken in Bangladeshi cities such as Cumilla and Brahmanbaria, from where many of these workers come.

“My main agenda was to give them an online space with a bottom-up approach, where they can speak in their Bengali dialects about Covid-19 in Singapore,” she said.

An Indian national who previously lived in Agartala, the capital of Tripura, which shares a border with Bangladesh, she is able to speak a mix of these dialects.

By holding these talks and interviews, she hopes to raise awareness about Covid-19 and the various forms of aid that are available to these migrant workers from organisations such as Transient Workers Count Too and the Bangladesh High Commission.

Dr Somrita’s streams have attracted a sizeable audience. Her first Facebook stream on May 5, for example, drew more than 700 views.

To reach out to these migrant workers, Dr Somrita sought the help of Mr AKM Mohsin, who publishes the Bengali paper Banglar Kantha in Singapore.

In the two weeks since she began her broadcasts, she has gained such traction that her audience members have already begun requesting particular topics for her to talk about, such as how to avoid falling for scam calls.

They have also offered her valuable feedback, which she has taken into consideration. 

For instance, some of her Muslim viewers told her that her original broadcast at 8pm was too early, as this was the time during which they would be breaking their fast and conducting prayers, so she has begun starting her broadcasts at 10pm instead.

Some of them have even taken to calling her “apu”, or “elder sister” in Bengali.

While Dr Somrita originally planned to conduct these live streams twice a week, she has received so many queries from audience members that she now does them around four times a week and is considering making it a daily affair.

“The best thing is, when I get up early in the morning (after the streams), I get messages from these workers, saying ‘You are a very good human being, sister, what you are doing is very nice’,” she said.

VISUALAID

Another translation-related initiative was begun by Tan Tock Seng Hospital service designer Shaina Tan, 24. 

Together with designer Jason Leow, 40, she published VisualAid on May 4, a website from which healthcare workers can download, free of charge, illustrated cue cards depicting commonly used phrases in healthcare settings, alongside their Bengali translations.

Shaina received feedback from clinicians and helped to collect phrases required, while Jason helped to build VisualAid’s website. They also reached out to translators and illustrators to help create the cue cards.

For example, one such cue card has an illustration of red circles radiating from a patient’s chest to depict chest pain. Healthcare providers can then print and laminate such cue cards to point to and communicate with migrant workers.

Ms Tan said she was inspired by an earlier translation initiative by another good Samaritan, Ms Sudesna Roy Chowdhury.

Ms Sudesna, a 24-year-old recent graduate from the National University of Singapore's Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, had earlier this year created a website with Bengali translations and audio recordings of common phrases used by doctors attending to Bangladeshi patients.

While clinicians had found Ms Sudesna’s translations helpful, Ms Tan’s colleagues at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases had given her feedback that it was difficult for them to refer to the website whenever they needed help with Bengali phrases, as their smartphones have to be sealed in plastic bags while they work.

These plastic bags, coupled with the goggles they wore, made it difficult for them to view their phone screens.

“I realised we needed something that was physical to use with their patients instead, and where I thought I could value-add with my own skillset as a designer was to include some visual cues and visual aid to help people understand these (clinicians’) questions better along with the translations,” Ms Tan said.

And so she reached out to some former coursemates from LaSalle College of the Arts to build on Ms Sudesna’s initiative, by designing the cue cards.

As of Thursday, the site has been visited more than 3,500 times, although she does not track how many times the cue cards have been downloaded.

She has also reached out to several healthcare workers for feedback on her project, such as Ms Lee Lexin, an associate psychologist at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, who has been deployed to migrant workers' dormitories.

Ms Lee has not used the cards in her practice but says they have good potential.

“I remember having to speak to a migrant worker who expressed low mood, and due to language constraints, communication was quite challenging as my questions were sometimes misinterpreted, and it was difficult to provide reassurance as his command of the English language was limited,” she said.

As feedback, she told Ms Tan that for example, she would like cue cards that can help her talk to migrant workers about chronic diseases, so that she can check if they have any pre-existing medical conditions. This could then influence how the team manages patients.

TRANSLATEFORSG

One of the translators that helped Ms Tan with VisualAid, Mr Aniruddha Adhikary, 22, has his own translation project aimed at helping the migrant worker community here, TranslateForSG.

As a Bangladeshi national who works as a software engineer in Singapore and whose mother is a nursing instructor in Bangladesh, Mr Aniruddha felt he was in a unique position to help these workers in his own way.

So he began building a website that offers translations of phrases commonly used between doctors and patients, for nine languages that are spoken by migrant communities in Singapore, such as Bengali, Burmese and Tagalog. 

Mr Aniruddha sought permission from Ms Sudesna to use her Bengali translations, while using Google Translate to produce basic translations for the other languages. 

He then reached out to more translators, who helped to improve on the Google translations. 

For him, this project goes beyond helping workers through Covid-19.

“I can see that even after Covid-19, TranslateForSG could become a way for workers to better integrate into society and explain their problems better in a general medical context and get better medical care, because the communication barrier would be alleviated,” he said.

While Ms Sudesna is supportive of these initiatives that have built on her own project, she feels that it is important that these tools are able to further benefit the migrant worker community going forward. 

She has since spoken to HealthServe, a non-profit organisation that serves migrant workers’ healthcare needs, about incorporating more phrases from other disciplines, such as dentistry and physiotherapy, so that other healthcare needs of migrant workers can be better met even after Covid-19 infections have subsided.

“It is emotionally uplifting to have all these grassroots projects pop up, but at the end of the day, we should also look at how we can make them long-term,” Ms Sudesna said.