Covid-19 language hub

As the global health crisis continues to unfold, Oxford Languages remains committed to advancing learning and communication by building and sharing language knowledge worldwide.

The Covid-19 language hub provides easy access to all the latest Oxford Languages research and resources created to support academic researchers, students, licensing partners, and language communities across the globe.

Here, we share insights and analysis on the lexical impact of Covid-19, key Covid-19 terminology translated into the world's major languages, educational resources to facilitate and support distance learning, information on accessing our world-leading dictionary content remotely, and more.

Covid-19 Multilingual Project

Oxford Languages now offers translations of key Covid-19 terminology from English into 19 major languages spoken across the globe.

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English language research

Learn about the linguistic development of the global health crisis with our corpus analysis series, and read about the latest Covid-19 terms added to the OED.

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OED teaching resources

Take a look at our educational resources for students and teachers, and find out how you can access the Oxford English Dictionary remotely through your library or institution.

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Covid-19 Multilingual Project

During the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s languages have had to adapt to a sudden influx of neologisms and scientific terminology as scientists and policymakers strive to convey essential advice to the public in a timely and effective manner. As the coronavirus spreads to ever more densely populated and linguistically diverse countries, it has become even more urgent to provide crucial information in various languages so that affected communities are able to fully and easily understand everything they need to know about this global health crisis.

Oxford Languages recognizes the importance of establishing a standard vocabulary around Covid-19 so that information can be communicated with clarity and precision. We are making these translations freely available in order to support local efforts to provide critical health advice to various communities around the world. The translations may also be of interest to those wishing to study how different languages are evolving as a result of the pandemic.

The translated words were selected on the basis of corpus data and comprise scientific terms relating to Covid-19 from the fields of medicine, biology, and epidemiology. The list also includes words and phrases referring to government and individual actions aimed at containing the spread of the virus and mitigating its social and economic effects.

The translations for each language are available to download as PDFs below. Just click the link and on the preview page that appears, click the downward-facing arrow to the right of the preview for the 'direct download' option.

The Covid-19 Multilingual Project is a work in progress and will be updated with new words and new languages in the coming months.