The Importance of Cancer Support
“You have to keep fighting because if you don’t, then you let the opponent win. And if your opponent is cancer then the results can be deadly.
– Lawrence Wary
We commend all of you who have and are fighting cancer, as a patient or a loved one. We know what a painful and difficult journey this can be. The right support and guidance can make a world of a difference in making this fight a little easier and comfortable.
Many cancer support groups and charitable organisations have stepped up to extend support. Before we talk about the support that has been offered, let’s talk about why cancer support is vital.
The Importance of Cancer Support
“Just as cancer affects your physical health, it can bring up a wide range of feelings you’re not used to dealing with. It can also make existing feelings seem more intense. They may change daily, hourly, or even minute to minute. This is true whether you’re currently in treatment, done with treatment, or a friend or family member.”
Reassuring support makes this journey less lonely and easier to deal with. Helping patients reclaim a sense of clarity and balance emotional stability improves their chances of a positive clinical outcome. Social relationships provide good emotional support, security, reassurance, guidance, and companionship. Many patients who are supported report better quality of life as it provides resources to cope with stress and the emotional turmoil that comes with treatment and the lengthy recovery period.
Yeleni Therapy and Support focus on extending this support. At Yeleni, free personalised health support is offered to anyone living with cancer.
Yeleni Therapy & Support
Yeleni Therapy & Support is a registered charity and is nationally recognised as a cancer care centre of excellence. They hold the Macmillan Quality Environment Mark and have passionate therapists who assist with handling patients’ mental, emotional and physical health throughout their cancer journey. They are renowned for their supportive and friendly environment, caring and understanding therapists, and considerate charges.
They also provide a broad range of complementary therapy sessions as well as their weekly, online, virtual, and wellbeing services.
Importance Of Translation in Cancer Support
Providing support in the native language of the patient is an often overlooked but extremely important aspect of care. Miscommunication in treatment or diagnosis can be disastrous definitely, but there is also the emotional aspect to be considered.
Research on the communication of emotion across languages, which examined nearly 2500 languages found that there “were low levels of similarity, and thus high variability, in the meaning of emotion terms across cultures.”
Another article puts it nicely: “different cultures prescribe different words to various emotions, and words to express a particular emotion may not be found in a certain language or may have a slightly different understanding. To illustrate an example, the researchers state "Persian, for instance, uses the word-form ænduh to express both the concepts of 'grief’ and ‘regret,’ whereas the Sirkhi dialect of Dargwa uses the word-form dard to express both the concepts of ‘grief’ and ‘anxiety.’ Persian speakers may therefore understand ‘grief’ as an emotion more similar to ‘regret,’ whereas Dargwa speakers may understand ‘grief’ as more similar to ‘anxiety.’ In this example we see how seemingly same words have different and nuanced connotations, which may imply different association with different emotional states.”
For patients fighting cancer and their carers, emotional support is crucial. Communicating positive emotion and providing emotional support in a way that benefits them means that the words used must be more than technically accurate. The context, the feeling, and the flavour must be conveyed in a clear and natural way.
How We Were Able To Help
We worked with Yeleni on some of their content and provided translation as well as Multilingual DTP services. The requirement was for 10 languages – Lithuanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Latvian, Portuguese, Polish, and Welsh.
In keeping with the requirements of Simpson Soft’s ISO 17100 certification, we assigned the task to native language translators and editors from our team who were handpicked for this project based on their area of expertise. Once the translation and review were completed, our QA team combed through the translated documents for any anomalies before the text was submitted to the client for final checks. Queries were resolved and the content was finalised.
Our DTP experts then got on the job to make the translation print ready. The text had to be formatted to precisely reflect the original document. In the project meeting for the DTP task, we noticed that the original document had an image of a word cloud. Though the client had not asked us to translate this, we enquired with them if they needed this translated as well. On confirmation from the client, we had this text translated as well and the formatting was carried out, reviewed, and submitted to the client in a print-ready format in all 10 languages.
Charity CEO & Founder, Nicky Heath had this to say about our work:
“I cannot speak highly enough of the translation work that Simpson Soft UK has done for my cancer charity. They were able to take our words and translate them into over 10 different languages that are spoken by people living here in Herefordshire. The standard of service has been superb throughout. All of my requests were met and dealt with quickly and efficiently, nothing has been too much trouble. They really have gone above and beyond to create the best version of our charity leaflet possible, and we could not be more thrilled with it. I would not hesitate to recommend this company to anyone looking for world class translation work.”
All of us at Simpson Soft thoroughly enjoyed working with the team at Yeleni and were humbled by the life-changing work that they do. Please reach out to us if you need any more information on cancer support or if we can help you with our translation and design skills.