When the Chinese community in New York City developed a sudden and irrational fear of Ebola-carrying salmon last week, New York Hospital Queens fielded the strange calls and quashed the rumor. You can’t get Ebola from the fish, hospital staff assured the callers.

Somehow, the Chinese government’s ban in September on the import of whole Norwegian salmon for an alleged bout of a fish disease called infectious salmon anemia got lost in translation on its way to the United States.

“It turns out something happening to the fish is being called ‘the Ebola of the salmon industry.’ People were scared,” hospital spokeswoman Camela Morrissey says.

New York is one of many multicultural U.S. cities scrambling to get accurate Ebola information to residents who speak dozens of languages before rumor and panic spread. New York Hospital Queens conducted its latest news briefing in Chinese, English and Spanish and offers content on its website in four languages.

While getting such messages out quickly is nothing new, experts say the multilingual efforts can be tricky business. The efforts are underfunded, dangerously slow and prone to error, increasing chances that a mistranslated word will fuel a rumor, cause a cultural faux pas or induce unnecessary panic, experts say. More.

See: USA Today

Subscribe to the translation news daily digest here. See more translation news.