Multilingual and Multicultural Crisis Communication through the Lens of Translation in Hong Kong.
Multilingual and Multicultural Crisis Communication through the Lens of Translation in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, located in the Asia-Pacific which is the most disaster-prone region of the world, is constantly susceptible to public health crises, natural disasters, and other emergencies. Hong Kong, as an international metropolis, is also population-diverse with residents and visitors from various linguistic, cultural, and ethnic communities. The ongoing public health crisis has highlighted the importance of and challenges in providing accessible and tailored information to people speaking different languages. Although the city has sophisticatedly outlined contingency plans, there is more that can be done to cater to the communication needs from its diverse population, especially in crisis scenarios. Towards this end, translation plays an important role in bridging communication gaps. Through this project, we wish to empower the citizens and other stakeholder groups with the knowledge and skills in preparing for crisis.
We raise the awareness of Hong Kong’s linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversities.
We organise translation workshops for people who speak different languages.
We create a platform where people, particularly non-Chinese speakers, share their stories in times of crisis.
As a node on the migration route, Hong Kong is a city that is truly diverse.
Geographically, it is located on the southern coast of China, and on the east side of the Pearl River estuary. Hong Kong is an important international port at the centre of the interconnecting network of East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Oceania. It carries massive movements of populations of and beyond these regions, from which many have come to stay. Historically, Hong Kong experienced the Imperial China, colonized by the United Kingdom, occupied by Japan, and is now a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. This complex trajectory has nurtured Hong Kong into a unique mixture of convergence and divergence with cultures from various corners of the world. It is now home to people of different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds.
According to the latest statistics released by the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong (2021), the city has a total population of around 7.413 million. Among them, around 91.6% are ethnically Chinese, and about 8.4% are of non-Chinese ethnicities. Of the latter are mainly Filipinos, Indians, Indonesians, Nepalese, Pakistanis, and Thais.
According to the latest statistics, there are around 201,291 Filipinos residing in Hong Kong, which is the largest ethnic group in the city except Chinese. In terms of other ethnicities, South Asians make up 1.4% of the population, including Indians, Nepalese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Sri Lankans.
According to the Hong Kong 2021 by-census, 88.2% of the population claimed that they usually spoke Cantonese in their daily life. English and Putonghua are both the second most spoken languages among the population. Besides, some Chinese dialects are also spoken in Hong Kong. As stated in the by-census, the three most spoken Chinese dialects in Hong Kong were Hakka, Fukien, and Chiu Chau. Hong Kong residents who are ethnically non-Chinese mainly speak their mother tongues, including Nepali, Filipino, Urdu, Hindi, and Thai.
