The international humanitarian sector and language translation in crisis situations: assessment of current practices and future needs

Abstract

Assessment Focus During major social disruptions, such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, or other crises, access to information is of fundamental importance to response and recovery operations. Ability to understand the language in which information is disseminated is a key marker of social vulnerability to disasters or crises. Assessing the degree to which the service efforts of organizations involved in the humanitarian sector are informed by commitment to multilingual communication and language translation is important to understanding how these organizations contribute to risk reduction and improved community resilience. This short report provides an assessment of the current state of practice and key language access issues in the humanitarian sector. Guiding Questions Assessment of the efforts in the humanitarian sector in crisis relief and recovery work can be understood in the context of the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit’s Grand Bargain commitments to reform aspects of humanitarian organizations’ relief work. Among those goals are key pronouncements on accountability, localization, and participation; language is integral to each. Because of the importance of language access to risk reduction and resilience in crisis situations, the assessment here attempts to address three questions: (1) what is the significance of language access to international humanitarian assistance efforts?; (2) what constitutes effective practices or key challenges at present?; and (3) what is the prospect for humanitarian organizations’ managing language access needs in the future? Key Findings Study subjects voiced near unanimity that providing language access is fundamentally important to humanitarian operations, but, at present, the capacity to formalize or routinize such efforts is limited; There was wide-spread consensus that accommodating language needs is necessary for achieving the Grand Bargain’s aim of two-way communication for greater accountability of operational humanitarian organizations towards affected communities; Accommodating language needs is consistently seen as a complex task; currently, even when there is capacity to address the issue, there is no agreement on how language needs should be accommodated; Language access capabilities may go beyond budget or staff resources and include issues of modality, culture, politics, ownership within the organizations, etc.; Key gaps in practice render service delivery less effective. Implications & Recommendations Findings suggest defined “ownership” of language translation within an organization is key to effective practice; Incorporating more systematic efforts on language translation in humanitarian operations is directly relevant to the Grand Bargain goals of accountability, localization, and participation in serving affected communities; Establishing systematic provision for communication in local languages in humanitarian response plans is crucial as the world is facing increasing hazard vulnerability; Improving humanitarian assistance requires management solutions such as better integration of language access provision with the cluster system