Crisis Communication

Rapid multilingual communication when the timeline collapses and the information still has to be right.

In a crisis, English-language broadcast reaches most of the country within hours. It does not reach the households where English isn't spoken, and those households learn what's happening from whoever tells them first. If that isn't you, it's someone else, and correcting a rumour is far more expensive than preventing one.

Crisis communication in-language is a capability, not a purchase. The organisations that do it well in hour three are the ones that built the relationships in the quiet year before.

What rapid response looks like

In 2020 the Department of Home Affairs needed critical health information in front of communities that broadcast wasn't reaching. We mobilised more than 180 professionals and delivered over 200 pieces of content across 63 languages, reaching more than 250,000 people a year. How it ran.

What made that possible wasn't speed of translation. It was that the network already existed, the terminology was already agreed, and the community distribution channels were already open. The translation was the fastest part.

The service

Standing capability. Priority access across 171 languages with agreed turnaround, terminology and escalation paths, set up before you need them.
Rapid translation and adaptation of alerts, health advice, safety instructions and public statements, with same-day turnaround on priority languages.
Community distribution through in-language media, community organisations and messaging platforms, which move faster than any owned channel.
Multilingual video and audio produced under compressed timelines, because audio reaches audiences with low literacy in their own language that text will not.
Misinformation response, which needs a different approach again: correcting a claim circulating on WhatsApp is not the same job as issuing a statement.

Prepare the boring parts in advance

The content that never changes should be translated and approved before an emergency: what the organisation does, how to contact it, how to reach an in-language service, what an official communication looks like so a fake one is recognisable.

So should the terminology. Arguing about how to render a clinical or legal term at 2am, in eleven languages, with a minister waiting, is a solvable problem you can solve in advance. Build the termbase early through translation services and the crisis version writes itself faster.

Common questions

Speak to our team

How quickly can you turn around urgent multilingual content?

Same day on priority languages for short-form content such as alerts and safety messages, where the source is settled. Longer content and full production run to the deadline you set, with the ISO 17100 revision step retained, because a fast translation of the wrong thing is not a saving. Standing arrangements are considerably faster than starting cold, which is the argument for setting one up before it's needed.

How do you counter misinformation in community languages?

By reaching the same channels it travels through, at speed, with a trusted voice rather than an official one. Corrections issued as departmental statements rarely travel; the same correction from a community figure people already listen to does. It also requires monitoring, because misinformation in Vietnamese or Arabic on a closed platform is invisible from an English-language monitoring dashboard.

Can we set up a standing arrangement before a crisis?

Yes, and it's the single highest-value preparation available. It covers priority language lists, agreed turnaround times, pre-approved terminology, pre-translated evergreen content, named contacts on both sides and escalation paths outside business hours. It costs very little to hold and removes the procurement delay at the exact moment you can't afford one.