By Sarah-Claire Jordan
Being in charge of a company can be one of the most stressful things to deal with, but it can also be one of the most rewarding positions. Once you get to a certain level with your company, you can start to expand internationally. Expanding internationally means more than just making sure all your marketing campaigns are translated and viable in new territory, however. You have to think about all of the people who will be working with your company in a foreign office, and make sure everything runs just as smoothly as it does at the main office. The best way to ensure all of this is to get your training material translated into the native languages of your new team members.
Now with the advent of e-learning, you can easily put all of your training material onto one platform and from there have it translated into different languages. E-learning is probably the fastest and most affordable way to train new team members as it is so easy to create and distribute the material. However, it can pose some issues in terms of language when compared to sending out a team to train new team members in their native language. Therefore it is imperative to make sure the translations of training material are as true to the source language as possible, as there won’t be a team there to clarify things if you choose to use the e-learning method.
It is so important to get the translation right when it comes to training material for many reasons. First of all, besides the many dialects one language can have, there are also regional variations from one area in the same country to another. This means you will have to work closely with a very experienced translator in order to make sure that the language is clear and you are getting across the message in the most direct way, using the language that the new team members will understand and identify with the most.
Besides linguistic variation, something else that can get in the way of a proper understanding of the training material is the format. All formats are not created equal across languages, so it would be best to take a look at some training material in the target language to make sure it follows the same pattern more or less. Certain color combinations and visual aids may not be effective or even appropriate in certain cultures, so that is something else that needs to be researched before moving on with the translation of the material.
All of this together can make for a great final product in terms of translated training material. The most important thing is to make sure that everyone, no matter what country they are from or language they speak, is on the same page in terms of company goals and standards. If that is established right from the start, any other problems that may come up will be much easier to resolve and everyone will have a clear idea of what is expected of them.