Crisis Translation: Communicating Risks in Multilingual Settings. Research Seminar.

Perception of risk is conditioned by emotive and cognitive responses (Ponari et al., 2015); humans avoid taking risks or engage with risks, because of our evolutionary adaptive abilities (we adapt to the environment and adapt the environment to us). “People judge a risk not only by what they think about it but also by how they feel about it” (Slovic & Peters, 2006, p. 323), and we interact with risks in culture-specific ways (Appleby-Arnold et al. 2018; Cornia, Dressel, & Pfeil, 2014; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983). Within social groups, humans underestimate certain risks and over-estimate others. Suddenly, we pay a price when health messages require attention and concerted action. In fact, WHO’s Communicating Risk in Public Health Emergencies guidelines (2017: ix) acknowledge the function of language-specific communication of hazards: “Accurate information provided early, often, and in languages and channels that people understand, trust and use, enables individuals to make choices and take actions to protect themselves, their families and communities from threatening health hazards”. Perception of risk is a social construct: altering social perceptions of risks (e.g. migration as a source of dangers to host societies) means controlling group dynamics (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983) and resources to mitigate known risks. Whereas social factors transform risks into vulnerabilities (Cannon, 2008) and increase the potential impact of cascading crises. Risk reduction scientists accept the cultural dimensions of risk perception yet continue to underestimate its links with using appropriate languages to communicate risk among multilingual communities. Experimental psychologists have shown connections between cognition, language, and risk (Rodríguez-Pujadas et al., 2013). On these premises, the talk discusses the role of translation in crisis settings. It seeks to understand how multilingual societies can provide crucial information, with the purpose of mitigating real risks, in languages that local populations can understand (Federici, 2020; Federici & O'Brien, 2020; O'Brien & Federici, 2019). It focuses on recent recommendations for enhanced language policies in crisis communication (Federici et al. 2019) as a point of departure for discussing how further research – including action research – conducted by cross-disciplinary research teams in collaboration with crisis managers may help reduce the impact of poor risk communication in complex multilingual settings. Which research methods could foreground studies focusing on the complexity of studying the role of linguistic and cultural identities in defining risks? Which type of studies could better prepare multilingual communities to act when at risk? What impact do financial resources have in mitigating growingly unpredictable natural hazards and public health risks in multilingual societies