Challenging the shortcomings of traditional translation in migration contexts: a translinguistic proposal for professionals in the humanitarian sector

All crises share a common vital need for adequate communicative measures, as all environments of critical importance rely on skilled, pertinent communication for their optimal resolution. Peace talks and diplomacy are at the core of thwarting war or bringing it to a close, and their failure leads to dire consequences; medical crises require immediate and pertinent communicative tools for their timely resolution, from operating rooms to international pandemics; even the impending, global-scale environmental crisis is to be tackled first and foremost on a communicative level through spreading awareness and international legislation. Not only can such crises be managed and brokered only by means of highly technical and specific communicative tools, but they also share one common consequence: be it war refugees, victims of human trafficking or asylum seekers displaced by drastic environmental changes, all great crises give way to migration, a crisis in and of itself. From a communicative standpoint, the vast scale of these macro-crises inevitably implies specific, unpredictable communicative challenges in the theatres of humanitarian emergency they generate, the investigation of which is the focus of the present work. More specifically, this chapter intends to investigate the efficacy and pertinence of the measures provided by institutional frameworks to resolve such communicative crises, the success of which dictate the very foundation of a fruitful process of rescue, accommodation and organic integration of refugees and asylum seekers into a hosting country’s society. The chapter explores the relationship between translation and translanguaging, two fields that, despite sharing an overlapping area of interest, are divided by conflicting ideologies and approaches to communication, resulting in different practices and goals. The analysis and the discussion of the presented data highlight how critical translational issues may be eased, if not solved, by providing professionals with new translinguistic perspectives and tools to face the challenges of communication environments in contexts of crises.