Crisis situations, including disasters, require making urgent decisions often without sufficient resources. These include decisions about translation and interpretation. We argue that using citizens in such contexts can be ethically justified despite their lack of professional translator training (we term them citizen translators). Translation potentially improves people’s access to crucial information for their safety, and therefore delivering such information is critical. We also acknowledge several ethical challenges with citizen translation based on our experience translating in humanitarian contexts, relevant literature, and discussions with various stakeholders engaged with our research consortium. Recourse to citizen translators has limitations, but we advance mitigation measures to address the ethical challenges they face providing timely information to linguistically diverse groups in crisis. We propose virtue ethics as a framework for citizen translators to examine and address ethical issues during crises. We suggest training that can prepare citizen translators for ethical challenges likely in the field.

中文翻译：

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让公民翻译​​参与灾难

包括灾难在内的危机局势往往需要没有足够资源就做出紧急决定。这些包括有关翻译和口译的决定。我们认为，在这种情况下使用公民尽管缺乏专业的翻译培训（我们称其为公民翻译），但从道德上讲还是有道理的。翻译有可能改善人们获取关键信息以确保其安全的能力，因此提供此类信息至关重要。我们还根据我们在人道主义背景下的翻译经验，相关文献以及与与我们的研究财团合作的各种利益相关者的讨论，认识到公民翻译面临的一些道德挑战。求助于公民翻译有局限性，但是我们会采取缓解措施来应对他们面临的道德挑战，并向危机中语言多样的群体提供及时的信息。我们提出道德伦理作为公民翻译在危机期间审查和解决道德问题的框架。我们建议提供培训，以使公民翻译们为该领域的道德挑战做好准备。