Emergency messaging in highly multicultural societies can be problematic when the language of communication is restricted to the official language. The ‘ideal solution’— professional translation— is high-priced, mainly because of issues associated with ongoing cost burden, administrative/legal implications, and the challenge of finding available translators for every unique language pairs. Citizen translation can potentially help to break down the communication barriers between emergency authorities and people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background. However, emergency authorities in many countries are still sceptical about relying on non-professional citizen translators to engender emergency messaging in multiple languages. This paper presents new findings from an Australian case study to further establish the evidence base required to support a successful implementation of citizen translation. This qualitative research contributes by investigating how members of CALD communities respond to the messages or warnings issued by emergency authorities, including the implications that the observed responses have for implementing citizen translation of emergency messages. A distinct form of citizen translation, known as the Collaborative Translation of Emergency Messages (Co-TEM), is proposed along with its underlying principles for specifically delivering the translation of official warnings or emergency messages. The study reports on key findings from Co-TEM that could further strengthen or extend existing knowledge in citizen translation. It was observed that while citizen translators could successfully translate emergency messages, a major threat to Co-TEM is that the official messages to be translated are sometimes flawed with jargons, ambiguity and lack of clarity. Recommendations are made to address this issue.

当交流的语言仅限于官方语言时，高度多元文化的社会中的紧急消息传递可能会出现问题。“理想的解决方案”（即专业翻译）价格昂贵，主要是由于与持续的成本负担，管理/法律问题以及为每种独特的语言对找到可用的翻译人员有关的问题。公民翻译可以潜在地打破来自文化和语言多样性（CALD）背景的应急机构与人们之间的沟通障碍。但是，许多国家/地区的应急部门仍对是否依靠非专业公民翻译人员提供多种语言的应急消息表示怀疑。本文介绍了澳大利亚案例研究的新发现，以进一步建立支持成功实施公民翻译所需的证据基础。这项定性研究通过调查CALD社区成员如何响应紧急当局发出的消息或警告做出了贡献，包括观察到的响应对实施公民紧急消息翻译的影响。提出了一种独特的公民翻译形式，称为“紧急消息的协作翻译”（Co-TEM），以及其基本原则，专门用于提供官方警告或紧急消息的翻译。该研究报告了Co-TEM的关键发现，这些发现可能会进一步加强或扩展公民翻译方面的现有知识。据观察，尽管公民翻译人员可以成功地翻译紧急信息，但对Co-TEM的主要威胁在于，待翻译的正式信息有时存在术语，模棱两可和缺乏清晰度的缺陷。提出了解决此问题的建议。