Preparing multilingual disaster communication for the crises of tomorrow: A conceptual discussion
This paper offers a conceptual discussion about how multilingualism can provide an unusual yet effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategy in multilingual societies. Language barriers or disaster linguicism in disasters can be deadly. The general approach to respond to, and solve, this issue is to disseminate disaster information in multilingual formats or to use bi-/multilingual interpreters and automated translators.
This research, along with existing scholarship in disaster studies, demonstrates that, to reduce disaster risk, simple resilience building and capital distribution may not be as effective; rather, capital distribution, as resourcing and empowering the socially vulnerable, needs to be accompanied by structural changes. Although multilingualism may sound like a utopian idea, one might argue that teaching people to speak several languages to solve disaster linguicism is naïve, its approach and ultimate goals aligned with translanguaging to deconstruct symbolic violence should not be overlooked.