Abstract
This paper offers a conceptual discussion about how multilingualism can provide an unusual yet effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategy in multilingual societies. Language barriers (or disaster linguicism) in disasters can be deadly. The general approach to respond to, and solve, this issue is to disseminate disaster information in multilingual formats or to use bi-/multilingual interpreters and (automated) translators. However, this paper raises issues with these conventional “solutions” to disaster linguicism. Since the root causes of disaster linguicism create unique social vulnerability for Indigenous/Tribal, Minority and Minoritized peoples and languages (ITMs), any serious attempt at DRR must reckon with these structural and ideological factors. Multilingualism, incorporating translanguaging, are the preferred theoretical framework and policy responses for progressing effective and sustainable solutions. Unlike conventional approaches to multilingualism, this seeks to develop multi-directional communication schemes by producing more community translators who can translanguage in order to both empower bi-/multilinguals and to decentralize social power.
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