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Part of
Non-professional Interpreting and Translation: State of the art and future of an emerging field of research
Edited by Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato and Ira Torresi
[Benjamins Translation Library 129] 2017
► pp. 231–255

Chapter 12
Language-related disaster relief in Haiti

Volunteer translator networks and language technologies in disaster aid

After Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake in January 2010, the disaster relief community saw the unprecedented response of thousands of spontaneous helpers – among them many multilinguals. Translators and interpreters were urgently needed to help establish communication within the disaster relief community, to assist in coordinating crisis intervention and above all, to provide urgent language services for those affected. Because of the chaotic situation in the aftermath of the earthquake, volunteers were able to mobilize only by massive use of social media and Internet technologies. This paper investigates the efforts of volunteer translators/interpreters to meet the needs of multilingual communication of the international disaster relief community. It explores how language volunteers mobilised and organised in spontaneous networks, what type of (translation) projects they launched and engaged in, which language technologies they used or helped to develop and which challenges they met during their work.

Keywords: volunteer interpreters/translators, disaster relief, humanitarian field, online networks, language technologies
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Translation and interpreting in the humanitarian field
    • 2.1Chronology
    • 2.2Location
    • 2.3Scale
  • 3.The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs)
  • 4.Case study: Haiti earthquake 2010
    • 4.1Haiti 2010
    • 4.2Coordination
    • 4.3Needs assessment and mobilisation: Achievements
    • 4.4Needs assessment and mobilization: Problems and challenges
    • 4.5Project planning and implementation
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.129.12rog
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