Humanitarian Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19

Voices from Transit Zones: A Study of Humanitarian Interpreting Challenges

“…A humanitarian emergency can be classified as "an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area" (Humanitarian Coalition 2023). Humanitarian emergencies or crises are nowadays a typical element of the current international geopolitical situation and mostly originate from conflicts, migration, or health emergencies (Ruiz Rosendo & Radicioni 2023). One of the main characteristics of such emergencies is the vulnerability of the people concerned, which can be defined as "a reduced capacity of individuals or groups to resist and recover from life-threatening hazards and is most often connected to poverty" (Humanitarian Coalition 2023).…”

“…The situations of crisis or emergencies in which humanitarian interpreting occurs arise in conflict or post-conflict scenarios (Todorova 2021;Ruiz Rosendo & Radicioni 2023). For this reason, it can be framed within the broader context of crisis translation (Federici 2016(Federici , 2021Federici & Declercq 2019), an umbrella term created to denote all language transfer activities, both oral and written, used to mitigate the harm of a crisis which indicates "an event, or series of events, that is non-routine, [and] poses a significant threat and requires a response to mitigate the harm" (Hunt et al 2019: 25).…”

“…Tedjouong and Todorova (2021: 102) summarise the main traits of humanitarian interpreters as follows: they are often untrained professionals with a completely different educational background, can belong to the beneficiaries with which they share a cultural and linguistic background (they are sometimes former migrants) or belong to the group of humanitarians. Besides enabling communication between authorities, humanitarian organisations and migrants, humanitarian interpreters often are humanitarian actors (Delgado Luchner & Kerbiche 2018: 424) and provide humanitarian assistance (Ruiz Rosendo & Radicioni 2023). The humanitarian role is also reflected in the perception of their own activity: untrained interpreters are particularly likely to see themselves more as humanitarians than as interpreters.…”