Find out about why native language support is essential if you want to truly capitalise on your global projects using teams across all geographical locations.
Many international businesses have expanded across the globe to capitalise on particular expertise or lower costs in certain regions. Plus studies and surveys have repeatedly shown that people prefer to purchase products with information in their own language. So if you are managing projects and/or producing products across the globe then you need to be sure that the people working for your organisation have information available in their first language to avoid any communication mis-steps.
Why Provide Native Language Support if Everyone Speaks English?
On global projects, team members may, indeed, speak English but there is a world of difference between being able to converse in a language and being fully fluent. Or understanding nuanced conversations or unspoken assumptions. So to fully capitalise on the skills and capabilities of international teams there should be no potential communication barriers. Why not start by providing support in the most common languages spoken around the world? Even between people fluent in the same language there can be communication barriers on complex projects. Adding an additional complication in the form of potential language barriers is a risk not worth taking.
And whilst large corporations want to benefit from the reduced costs of outsourcing project work, they are increasingly realising that some upfront investment at the start of the project to minimise communication barriers is delivering a good return in terms of both productivity and employee motivation. Some corporations are even arranging for global teams to work and live together for an extended period in a single location while the project initiation phase takes shape. Global serviced accommodation provides living, working and socialising spaces on a temporary basis ranging from a week to several months, and has been shown to result in better project performance, especially for complex projects. Even temporarily co-locating teams builds stronger bonds, and develops the trust necessary to hold each other accountable.
Instead translate project documentation into relevant native languages and use voice overs on video resources. Make sure to use a professional foreign language voice over agency (for instance Matinee Multilingual) who can also provide translation services for you. Auto-translation tools may be fine to get the gist of something but are not good enough for important documentation and could be an insult to native speakers.
If your don’t have the budget or capabilities to easily provide resources in all languages then a professional British voice over in a neutral accent on some of the video resources will ensure that as many people on the project as possible can benefit from those resources.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela
The Difference Between Native & Localised
It is important to understand the difference between a native language and a localised language when you are producing foreign language resources for teams working on global projects. Providing a native language resource means providing it in the first language of a particular country. That could be as simple as offering a voiceover in that native language. However, if your project teams are located in a specific region, you’ll need to look at localisation as well. This means ensuring that the very specific area you want to communicate unambiguously with is catered for with the correct dialect and localised language in voice and text (if using subtitles).
