Constructing a Translation Strategy
Have you ever trained for a job in your second language? How confident would you feel in your ability to do the work well and (most importantly) safely if your employee handbook and all training materials were only available in the language you studied back in high school? Personally, I wouldn’t want to take the risk yet that’s exactly what most native Spanish-speakers across the US do every day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates about half of all construction laborers are Hispanic, and though a large and growing part of our workforce is likely to speak Spanish as their primary language, most professional resources are available only in English.
Having your team’s safety, training, and HR documents translated into Spanish is an immediate and highly effective way of ensuring everyone can learn thoroughly and work safely. If your company has never done any translation, or if you’ve gotten by so far with bilingual employees handling filling the gaps, you might be wondering where to start. I’m happy to say that the process is actually quite simple! There are three general steps to begin: know your audience, identify key materials, and choose a language services provider (LSP).
First, get to know exactly who your audience is. The Hispanic workforce in US construction is incredibly diverse, coming from different countries with their own regional dialect, slang, grammatical norms, and style preferences. Your team likely comes various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, so a general US variant of Spanish is best to make the material easily understood by all. Your LSP will know how to manage this, and we’ll touch on that later.
Second, identify key materials for translation. The beauty of translation is that you can start with just one document at a time. The two most common starting points are Toolbox Talks since they reach such a wide audience, and employee handbooks since they communicate essential information on employees’ rights and responsibilities. Anything that causes friction, miscommunications, delays, or injuries on your team is a good candidate.
Third, choose the right type of provider for your organization. There are plenty of LSP options, from contracting individual freelancers to partnering with an agency that can handle anything from written translation to spoken interpreting and subtitling or voice over (dubbing) for videos. It truly is best to work with professional linguists rather than rely on AI/machine translation or bilingual employees. Only a trained linguist has the experience and expertise to ensure confidentiality, linguistic quality, and a customized translation that will account for your brand’s tone and style as well as your audience’s reading level or preferred variant.
If you’d like to learn more, be sure to catch my breakout session at the national NAWIC convention on August 14 in Houston! As a language access advocate for the trades, I’m always eager to hear from industry experts, so don’t be a stranger.
loretta.mulberry@terratranslations.com