Bridge the Language Gap During Meetings: Multilanguage Communication

Language constraints are different in the business world, and they should be treated with the utmost tenacity. A brand could lose customers and prospective partners due to language restrictions. This can resultantly make an establishment run at a loss.

For brands that operate with a multilingual workforce and audience, it is pertinent for them to find a solution to the problem of language not just to avoid communication breakdown but also to establish a sense of inclusiveness in those that speak other languages.

To keep an establishment running, meetings are as important as inevitable. How then do you leverage and successfully communicate with your diverse audience? Do you hold meetings haphazardly with little consideration to the audience and risk running the company at a loss? Before finding solutions to these problems, a brand should understand certain things before organizing meetings with a multilingual audience.

What To Know Before Organizing A Multilingual Meeting To Bridge Language Gap

1. Diverse Cultures

There is already an established knowledge that in the meeting with you are people that speak different languages, you should also understand that these people are from different cultures. So, before the meeting, there should be findings premised on what is culturally acceptable during a conversation in these cultures. Also, try to find their deal breakers and avoid making such blunders.

2. How To Communicate

People of different cultures have their ways of communicating. They already have a presumed or supposed way that they envisioned communication to go and any digress could be disappointing on their part. For some people, it is normal to have meetings in loud voices, while some would rather prefer talking in almost hush tones.

3. Understand Each Nationals

The French, for example, are comfortable airing their thoughts and emotions, while some people of different backgrounds might consider this rude and unprofessional. So, it will make a lot of sense to make inquiries on the languages to be onboard before embarking on the meeting.

4. Time Moderation

No one ever wants to be in a meeting in time and later waits for the meeting to commence. Although, there are possibilities that some people are indifferent towards commencing a meeting later than the appointed time, whereas that is unacceptable for some people. Also, some people will never wait after the stipulated time for a meeting has elapsed.

Meanwhile, the language gap can be bridged during meetings using an automatic speech recognition device. The device is a technology that has been wired to detect human speech and transcribe it into text or dub it into another language from the original language. A mini screen can be placed in front of each participant that only shows information in an already processed language of choice.

To avoid errors, localization services could be outsourced. They are a set of professionals skilled with the prowess of a native speaker of a language. They transcribe with the regulations of the background values and conventions of languages. They know the choice of words to use to avoid words that might come off as offensive and insensitive to native speakers. Similarly, video remote interpretation can also solve the issue of language in a multilingual meeting.

A video remote interpretation is a tool that connects an interpreter with people that need help with understanding another language. It can also help people with hearing impairment by interpreting into sign language. One advantage of remote video interpretation is that it can cover multiple audiences at a go without the interpreter being physically present.

Conclusion

Language is an important tool in communication. It helps humans to communicate their thoughts with each other effortlessly successfully. However, communication might end up not performing the purpose of exchanging thoughts if communication is not done in a mutual language.

Understandably, people are of different backgrounds with diverse languages; regardless of that, human beings still need to relate with each other. Therefore, the application of interpretation devices like video transcriptions and video remote interpretation will solve this problem of communicating with a multilingual audience.

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Source: Vietnam Insider