World PT Day materials available in more than 50 languages

This year’s World PT Day materials have been translated into more than 50 languages – from Albanian to Vietnamese.

The translations have been kindly provided by volunteers from World Physiotherapy member organisations and national physiotherapy associations, and by individual physiotherapists. All the translations have been published on the World Physiotherapy website and shared on social media. 

Emma Stokes, World Physiotherapy president, said: “It’s great to see so many of our member organisations and individual physiotherapists getting involved in World PT Day and helping raise the profile of the physiotherapy profession.

“There is no better way to show how inclusive our profession is than being able to share the World PT Day materials in a range of languages and to reach people in so many countries.  

“Many of us have been affected by COVID-19, personally and professionally. It’s important we take time today to think about our friends and colleagues who have died or are living with the consequences of COVID-19.”

The World PT Day materials are available, or in production, in 19 of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world: 

• English (1,268m speakers)
• Traditional Chinese (1,120m speakers)
• Hindi (637m speakers)
• Spanish (538m speakers)
• French (277m speakers)
• Arabic (274m speakers)
• Bangla (265m speakers)
• Russian (258m speakers) 
• Portuguese (252m speakers)
• Indonesian (199m speakers)
• Urdu (171m speakers)
• German (132m speakers)
• Japanese (126m speakers)
• Swahili (99m speakers)
• Marathi (95m speakers)
• Telegu (93m speakers)
• Turkish (85m speakers)
• Tamil (84m speakers)
• Punjabi (83m speakers)

Yue Chinese (85m speakers) is the only language in the top 20 spoken languages list that is not included in the translations for World PT Day.

The World PT Day materials are also available, or in production, in: Albanian, Assamese, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Dutch (Belgium), Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hungarian, Igbo, Italian, Kurdish, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Malagasy, Montenegrin, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovenian, Tajik, Thai, Vietnamese.

The theme for World PT Day 2020 is rehabilitation after COVID-19 and includes infographics and posters aimed at the general public promoting the role of physiotherapy in rehabilitation after COVID-19, and infographics focusing on the delivery of physiotherapy via telehealth. There is also a resource list for facts, research findings, statistics and articles to help you demonstrate the contribution of physiotherapists.

World PT Day toolkit

The World PT Day toolkit includes a range of materials to share the campaign in your country/territory.

As part of the response to COVID-19, many countries/territories have introduced restrictions about holding large events and gatherings. Please consider this when making plans for World PT Day and make sure you follow any guidelines in your country/territory about social distancing.

You may want to consider developing campaigns and activities on social media, radio and TV.