Have you ever felt at the mercy of your community translations provider? Even a really tiny bit… have you ever noticed that you were losing control? If you are like me, losing control is one of those things that you can only afford if you trust the person you are handing it over to.

Process that you can follow in almost any community translations project. So let’s just go straight to the point.

1. Prepare a community translations project plan

A project plan doesn’t need to be an extensive document, but it needs to set the tone for the project.

2. Define your objective

Or what we always say: translate with purpose. What do you want to achieve by investing time, effort and $$$ in translating a fact sheet, a brochure or a booklet?

Understanding the importance of setting goals is key to success. It will also make it easy to measure the results of your community translations project and evaluate the outcomes.

3. Identify and get familiar with your audience

Community translations are a powerful marketing tool. Whether you have a health promotion portfolio, work in cultural diversity, or in a membership-based organisation, you are essentially marketing for CALD communities. As such, you need to identify your audience and find out:

  1. what information they already have on the topic
  2. what information is already available
  3. how they like to consume information
  4. whether there are any cultural barriers for the audience to do what you are asking them to do in your translation.

The answers to these points will help you shape the content and set the tone and register of the resource.

community translations

4. Draft the plain English resource

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you are probably thinking ‘not this again, please!’. I know, but writing translation-friendly content will make or break your project. Think about a complex sentence that has jargon. It will be more likely for translators to misinterpret a concept or make the wrong terminology choice.

5. Be aware of cultural red flags

Cultural red flags are concepts, ideas or even words that can be understood very differently depending on the cultural background and beliefs of the audience. You should have identified them in step 3, now you just have to make sure that the words that you used will be appropriate in the languages of the project. Your community translations provider will be able to give you advice on this.

6. Consider writing one plain English resource per cultural group

For ultimate community translations outcomes, you should consider targeting the content to each community, rather than having a one-size-fits-all English document. At Sylaba we follow the 80/20 rule, which means that the 20 % of a resource is targeted to a particular audience, whereas the other 80 % is the same across cultures.

7. Brief your community translations provider very rigorously

Remember the project plan that we talked about on step 1? Fill it out with information regarding your audience, the project purpose, translations distribution channels and even customer journey. Having a deep understanding of your project will help the translators make the right decisions. And don’t forget to share with them previously translated content!

8. Have an approved glossary of terms

Ask your translations provider to create and upkeep a glossary of terms for your organisation. Did you know that ‘breast cancer’ has two different translations in Spanish? Ensuring that the translators use the same translation across all your publications is important to ensure quality.

9. Do community checking or consumer testing

Testing the translations before you publish them is a good way to put the seal of approval in the project. Some translations providers can manage this process for you in a cost-effective way.

10. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate

Did you follow our advice and set specific goals for your translation project? Then, measuring the results and evaluating the overall effort shouldn’t be too hard. Nothing like looking back at how we managed the project to find ways to improve.

Now you are all set! Stay tuned for Sylaba’s Ultimate Project Plan Template and happy projects to you.

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About the Author: Sonia Sanchez
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