ABSTRACT

This article presents an autoethnography (AE) of my experience of improvising disaster communication with community translators in Denmark through the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the author, who is a novice in Danish, those who are not competent in the dominant language(s) of communication are deemed to be more vulnerable in disaster situations, such as the current pandemic, due to language barriers and disaster linguicism. However, using AE, this research explores the potential, and the evidence, for using community translators to foster inclusive, interactive and spontaneous disaster communication to overcome disaster linguicism, and to protect Indigenous/Tribal, Minority and Minoritized languages and peoples’ (ITMs) communication rights. My critical self-reflection and observation from an ITM perspective challenge the traditional unidirectional top-down disaster communication schemes which are still dominant in disaster management.

摘要

本文介绍了我在 COVID-19 大流行的早期阶段与丹麦社区翻译人员即兴进行灾难沟通的经历的自我民族志 (AE)。像作者一样，他是丹麦语的新手，由于语言障碍和灾难语言主义，那些不具备主要交流语言能力的人在灾难情况下（例如当前的大流行）被认为更容易受到伤害。然而，使用 AE，这项研究探索了使用社区翻译来促进包容、互动和自发的灾难交流以克服灾难语言主义并保护土著/部落、少数民族和少数民族化语言和人民的潜力和证据' (ITMs) 通信权。我从 ITM 角度的批判性自我反省和观察挑战了传统的单向自上而下的灾害通信方案，该方案在灾害管理中仍然占主导地位。