Translating the message – making crisis communications available for all

An online citizen translation tool developed in partnership with the New Zealand Red Cross is helping people at risk in an emergency access the information they need.

Many people live in areas at risk of adverse events triggered by natural hazards or humans. Often the main language used within the community is not their own. If individuals fail to understand emergency information during a crisis quickly, their lives can be put in danger.

Professor Federico M Federici, (UCL Centre for Translation Studies) has developed a training programme in collaboration with researchers at Dublin City University and the New Zealand Red Cross, to help speakers of rare languages translate information to assist their languages communities during a crisis. 

“The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in New Zealand highlighted the need to communicate in languages other than English. In 2020, 260 languages are spoken across the two islands – from multiple Polynesian languages to Persian and Burmese.” explains Professor Federici. “COVID-19 has proven how difficult is to provide vital information to all residents. Thanks to the crisis translation training we offered through New Zealand Red Cross, rare language communities were able to receive emergency information in a language they understand.” 

Professor Federici is part of the EU-funded INTERACT project, an international network of academics, technology developers, and aid organisations led by Professor Sharon O’Brien (Dublin City University, DCU), which is working together to improve communication in multilingual crisis settings. Its aim was to train local people to improve access to crisis communication to some sustainable solution for rare language combinations that are not catered for by the commercial sectors, the speakers of which cannot access professional translation services. 

For the INTERACT project, Professor Federici coordinated work on crisis translation training in collaboration with Professor Sharon O’Brien and Dr Patrick Caldwell (both Dublin City University). Working with Dr Minako O’Hagan (University of Auckland), they also designed crisis translation training materials focused on the foundation principles of translating, editing automated translations, and subtitling emergency messages. 

A UCL Global Engagement Fund grant enabled Federici to work further with Dr O’Hagan to apply INTERACT’s preliminary research results in this area, when the New Zealand Red Cross wanted to improve crisis communication in their country.

The project has now trained directly more than 190 bilingual individuals in New Zealand in the basic principles of translation and Cochrane, the international organization that reviews research evidence to inform health decision making. Cochrane uses the training to support its community of 1,180 medical professionals who volunteer as translators of evidence-based reviews of medical research. An online version of the Citizen Translation course is also freely available on YouTube.

Professor Federici is also working with students on UCL’s Crisis Translation module and collaborated with students from the MSc in Smart Cities and Urban Analytics to support research partner Translators without Borders to develop ‘Crisis Language Maps’. These maps help humanitarian organisations to understand the different languages spoken in areas regularly exposed to risks from natural hazards and anticipate how best to communicate with at-risk communities.