Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts

"This extremely absorbing volume is a huge wake-up call for all organisations involved in trying to ensure effective communication and mediation during local and international states of emergency. The eight chapters, all by respected translation scholars, scrutinize practices, protocols and trainings in a wide variety of areas, from the UN, government, military, NGO, hospital, down to the mediators/ translators/ interpreters themselves; and each chapter is enriched with pertinent and extremely useful field work examples." (David Katan, Professor, Universita del Salento, Italy)

Contributors to this volume discuss different types of emergencies and conflicts and how challenging these multilingual operational environments are for linguists.Contributors to this volume discuss different types of emergencies and conflicts and how challenging these multilingual operational environments are for linguists. The growth in reach and number of international relief operations has exposed the limits of current research into these challenges. Evidence in disaster management studies suggests communication remains a major operational issue. This book calls for enhanced focus on the role of translators and interpreters in emergencies by discussing existing research and questions which have emerged from experience in the field. Contributions in this volume undeniably demonstrate the need for multidisciplinary studies in mediating multilingual emergencies. They consider emergencies in hospitals (Cox and Lázaro Gutiérrez), in disaster response (Dogan), in bespoke training to translators in fast-developing crises (O’Brien), and in planning responses in predictably dangerous habitats (Razumovskaya & Bartashova). The volume also illustrates scenarios in which discourse on language mediation shows bias by limiting political dialogues (Al Shehari), by conditioning news reporting (Skorokhod), and by enforcing stereotypical notions of linguists in wars (Gaunt).