---
title: How student translators are fighting the spread of coronavirus with words
description: "Citizens of Middle Eastern countries are facing an additional battle in the fight against coronavirus: misinformation. It’s a sad fact..."
---

[aiaTranslations: The Language of Life Sciences Blog ](https://aiatranslations.com/blog)

# [How student translators are fighting the spread of coronavirus with words](https://aiatranslations.com/blog/post/how-student-translators-are-fighting-the-spread-of-coronavirus-with-words)

 Written by [Alysa Salzberg](https://aiatranslations.com/blog/author/alysa-salzberg) | May 8, 2020 4:00:00 AM

Citizens of Middle Eastern countries are facing an additional battle in the fight against coronavirus: misinformation.

It’s a sad fact that coronavirus-related sensationalist stories and “fake news” can be found in countries and cultures all over the globe, but Arabic-speaking countries have additional challenges.

Although their language is one of the most-spoken in the world, Arabic is only present on 0.6% of websites. This means that people who don’ t speak another language have less options to get or fact-check information related to COVID-19.

Luckily, Ideas Beyond Borders (IBB), an organization of Arabic-speaking student translators, is working hard to change this situation. The group has already translated more than 11 million words from online books and Wikipedia articles into Arabic, including coronavirus-related information. They’ve also created videos in Arabic sharing information that aims to break myths and propaganda around the disease. There’s definitely a call for them; the videos have already gotten millions of views.

Accurate information is essential to understanding and preventing diseases like COVID-19. Hopefully IBB’s translations and videos will continue to spread, and help stop the spread of coronavirus.

[Read on](https://www.thenational.ae/world/mena/coronavirus-the-student-translators-battling-middle-east-misinformation-1.1012209) to learn more about the dangers of propaganda and misinformation surrounding COVID-19 in the Middle East, and what IBB is doing to fight it.

[*Image source*](https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+19+in+arabic&oq=covi&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l2j69i57j69i60j69i65l3j69i60.2003j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

*Contact Our Writer – *[*Alysa Salzberg*](http://www.alysasalzberg.com/)

[View full post](https://aiatranslations.com/blog/post/how-student-translators-are-fighting-the-spread-of-coronavirus-with-words)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Alysa Salzberg"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2023-12-12T16:03:29.118Z",
  "datePublished" : "2020-05-08T04:00:00Z",
  "headline" : "How student translators are fighting the spread of coronavirus with words",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 78,
    "url" : "https://40117043.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/40117043/Imported_Blog_Media/0b5797_fe55ad6a9a86479990fd27bf8b9b705f~mv2-1.jpg",
    "width" : 202
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://aiatranslations.com/blog/post/how-student-translators-are-fighting-the-spread-of-coronavirus-with-words",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60,
      "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
      "width" : 60
    },
    "name" : "aiaTranslations:  The Language of Life Sciences Blog"
  }
}
```