Thursday, September 08, 2005
Translation update v.2
Well, I've now sat in on 2 of these phone conferences with the Japanese partners. It turns out that one of the Japanese people speaks some English, and has been acting as a translator. Because of this, I ended up just listening in and giving feedback to someone about how well communication was happening. I reported on what got translated correctly, what was left out, what needed clarification, etc. So mostly I just sat and listened.
I was brought into this project because they were having communications issues and I knew some Japanese, and after having sat in on about 6 hours of these meetings I've learned quite a lot about effective communication. Basically, I tried to figure out why it wasn't happening, and coming up with solutions for it. The main problem in this case was not the language barrier. Effective communication was simply not happening, and this was making the language barrier difficult to cross.
Here are some suggestions I've come up with to help effective communication happen:
1. Ask for clarification when when you aren't sure of what is being said, especially if you're the translator. Don't be timid and just do your best to guess at what is being said and then translate that.
2. Don't throw in additional information that hasn't been said, since you may be wrong.
3. Repeat back what you are going to translate so that it is clear to everyone what is going through to the other side. This way if you leave out something you didn't think was important, the side that said it knows that that bit has been left out.
4. Realize that not everyone is a native English-speaking salesperson. The translator may just be an engineer who happens to know a little bit of English. Using euphemisms, complex words and phrases, marketing speak, and all other forms of saying something without actually being clear of what you are saying is a BAD THING. Verbage may work for marketing, but it makes a translator's job very difficult. You need to make an effort to be very clear in what you are saying.
5. After you discuss something in English, summarize what was discussed for the translator. Using simple words and short sentences, tell the translator exactly what to say. Most importantly, be straight to the point.
6. Answer questions directly. When someone asks a yes or no question, DON'T give a paragraph's worth of explanation that doesn't really answer the question anyway.
7. Stay on topic. Define the topics that will be discussed at the beginning of the meeting, and then go through them one by one. Make sure everyone knows why a topic is being discussed.
8. Know why you are having the meeting in the first place. Don't hold the meeting if you're just going to jump from topic to topic, and then decide for each topic that this isn't really the time or place to discuss the topic anyway.
The guy I was giving feedback to was doing an excellent job at trying to communicate effectively, so it's a real shame that he wasn't one of the major characters in these discussions.
As it turns out, to try to speed up these critical discussions and agreements, many of the people involved ended up going to Japan this week to do it face to face. I, unfortunately, wasn't able to go. I'm only doing this as an extra volunteer job which isn't supposed to have any impact on my real job. Obviously flying to Japan would have an impact.
So, that's my (edited) rant about translating. Hopefully I'll have a chance to actually speak Japanese at these meetings in the future in order to help communicate effectively.
I was brought into this project because they were having communications issues and I knew some Japanese, and after having sat in on about 6 hours of these meetings I've learned quite a lot about effective communication. Basically, I tried to figure out why it wasn't happening, and coming up with solutions for it. The main problem in this case was not the language barrier. Effective communication was simply not happening, and this was making the language barrier difficult to cross.
Here are some suggestions I've come up with to help effective communication happen:
1. Ask for clarification when when you aren't sure of what is being said, especially if you're the translator. Don't be timid and just do your best to guess at what is being said and then translate that.
2. Don't throw in additional information that hasn't been said, since you may be wrong.
3. Repeat back what you are going to translate so that it is clear to everyone what is going through to the other side. This way if you leave out something you didn't think was important, the side that said it knows that that bit has been left out.
4. Realize that not everyone is a native English-speaking salesperson. The translator may just be an engineer who happens to know a little bit of English. Using euphemisms, complex words and phrases, marketing speak, and all other forms of saying something without actually being clear of what you are saying is a BAD THING. Verbage may work for marketing, but it makes a translator's job very difficult. You need to make an effort to be very clear in what you are saying.
5. After you discuss something in English, summarize what was discussed for the translator. Using simple words and short sentences, tell the translator exactly what to say. Most importantly, be straight to the point.
6. Answer questions directly. When someone asks a yes or no question, DON'T give a paragraph's worth of explanation that doesn't really answer the question anyway.
7. Stay on topic. Define the topics that will be discussed at the beginning of the meeting, and then go through them one by one. Make sure everyone knows why a topic is being discussed.
8. Know why you are having the meeting in the first place. Don't hold the meeting if you're just going to jump from topic to topic, and then decide for each topic that this isn't really the time or place to discuss the topic anyway.
The guy I was giving feedback to was doing an excellent job at trying to communicate effectively, so it's a real shame that he wasn't one of the major characters in these discussions.
As it turns out, to try to speed up these critical discussions and agreements, many of the people involved ended up going to Japan this week to do it face to face. I, unfortunately, wasn't able to go. I'm only doing this as an extra volunteer job which isn't supposed to have any impact on my real job. Obviously flying to Japan would have an impact.
So, that's my (edited) rant about translating. Hopefully I'll have a chance to actually speak Japanese at these meetings in the future in order to help communicate effectively.
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