Crisis situations, including disasters, require making urgent decisions often without sufficient resources. These include decisions about translation and interpretation. We argue that using citizens in such contexts can be ethically justified despite their lack of professional translator training (we term them citizen translators). Translation potentially improves people’s access to crucial information for their safety, and therefore delivering such information is critical. We also acknowledge several ethical challenges with citizen translation based on our experience translating in humanitarian contexts, relevant literature, and discussions with various stakeholders engaged with our research consortium. Recourse to citizen translators has limitations, but we advance mitigation measures to address the ethical challenges they face providing timely information to linguistically diverse groups in crisis. We propose virtue ethics as a framework for citizen translators to examine and address ethical issues during crises. We suggest training that can prepare citizen translators for ethical challenges likely in the field.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Citizen translation; Non-professional translation; Crisis translation; Translation in humanitarian settings; Virtue ethics; Translator training
This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713567, Science Foundation Ireland in the ADAPT Centre (Grant 13/RC/2106), European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Grant No. 734211)
ID Code:
24299
Deposited On:
24 Mar 2020 12:38 by
Alessandra Rossetti
. Last Modified 19 Oct 2020 12:11