Guest post - How to Prepare Your International Staff Training Materials for Future Translation

How to Prepare Your International Staff Training Materials for Future Translation

The global economy produces new opportunities to expand and grow markets. For businesses, the challenge is creating a staff training strategy that supports their goals and provides a consistent message across varied markets. eLearning offers a cost-effective solution to training for world-wide staff with a uniform approach that also takes into consideration local concerns and cultures.

As businesses develop their global strategies, they should incorporate staff training as part of their overall approach. While English remains the major language for international commerce, staff members learn best in their own first languages. Training, therefore, needs to plan for eLearning translation of materials into a variety of languages while taking into account the demands of local markets and cost management of training programs.

Plan Global Content

Since training materials will need to be translated, companies should focus on creating great content that translates smoothly into multiple languages. Media should be as culturally neutral as possible by avoiding colloquialisms that do not translate well, overly complex sentences that take longer to translate, or word-choices that have too much nuance in one language.

Design Smart Materials

Material design should take into account formats that will accommodate the differences in language without the need to resize or change layouts for each market. Visual materials should be culturally neutral so as not to need creating new imagery every time. The approach should be used for all media, from text to images to video.

Use Cost-Effective Translation

Once training content is created, the next step is choosing the best method for translating it into local languages. Machine translation is software that produces literal translations from one language to another. The advantage of this method is that it is highly cost-effective. However, the downside is weak translations that need to be further refined since they do not take context and nuance into consideration.

Human translations, on the other hand, produces highly-accurate interpretations that take into account local culture and sensitivities. The cost can be higher, but if businesses have kept their original language materials straightforward, these can be reduced.

Reduce Costs Through Smart Planning

From choosing local markets, designing materials,and creating content, businesses can develop eLearning training materials that satisfy their needs while keeping down costs. For best approaches, they should keep the eventuality of translation in mind when creating content. Key points to consider include:

• Culture-neutral content will keep the material universal
• Visual material without identifiable culture signifiers reduces image costs
• Minimize audio speech in video to reduce hiring multiple language speakers
• Avoid text in imagery that might entail recreating images for every market
• Assess cost differences between machine and human translation
• Investigate learning management systems for easy roll-out across multiple markets

For execution of best learning plans and strategy practices, a language service provider (LSP) can be an enormous benefit. LSPs employ staff with expertise in major foreign business markets, advise on training implementation, and help manage costs.

As experts in the translation field, they also maintain software systems that archive translated materials for future use. These reduce translation costs for standard materials throughout the life of training programs.

Through smart planning and expert consultations, businesses can prepare their staff training programs with minimized costs while maintaining quality content. In strategizing ahead of time for translation, these companies can save themselves valuable resources in the long run, while creating the most effective training program for their global employees.

Rachel Wheeler