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.