5 Major Areas of HR Where Translation is Vitally Important

In this day and age, the workforce is more diverse than ever. Companies of all sizes and specialties are quickly tapping into the diverse talents, resources, and subsequent languages of the world economy, finding themselves increasingly motivated to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps in order to recruit, keep, and develop their most valuable talent.

For multinational companies, one of the biggest challenges is to maintain brand and cultural unity across geographic borders. The same is true for domestic companies with a diverse workforce. Maintaining clear lines of communication is vitally important to performance, quality, safety, and the cultivation of an inclusive culture. And, for any company with a significant number of employees who primarily speak a language other than English, translation is incredibly important for clear communication to occur.

Below are 5 major areas of Human Resources where translation can be of crucial importance:

1. Recruitment

Multilingual and international staffing and recruitment necessitates the use of translated or bilingual ads, forms, applications, employment contracts and any related website content. A foreign language speaker with the skills and talents a potential employer needs will be more attracted to an open position if all details are presented in their mother tongue.

2. Training Materials

Translating training guides, codes of conduct, handbooks, manuals, and any e-learning courses – as well as adding subtitles to training videos or localizing video content – will help avoid any ambiguity or “room for error” in employee on-boarding & training.

3. Employment

Offering review forms and communication, benefit plans and guides, insurance documents, and related website content (such as employee portals) in the languages employees speak will result in giving them control over finding and researching the information they need rather than needing one-on-one support from HR employees.

4. Policies & Procedures

Documents like human resource policies and safety procedures are usually documents carefully crafted to comply with company policies and state and federal regulations. Where compliance is at play, translation is requisite for the elimination of legal risks.

5. Ongoing Communication

Offering translation of newsletters, blogs, FAQs for employees, corporate notices, memos and announcements will help maintain clear direct communication. Above all, offering communication in multiple languages will foster the idea of a culture that is inclusive and supportive.

Translation of HR documents requires high quality work, a blend of precise legal and HR terminology, and the need for exact, unambiguous, and culturally accurate verbiage. There simply is no room for error.

CAT Tools

The good news is that HR documents are, overall, a fantastic candidate for the use of Computer Assisted Translation tools. CAT tools aid in maintaining terminological consistency and accuracy and save companies a high percentage of translation dollars over time – updates to existing documents are quick and easy to implement, with charges only reflecting new or modified material. Thanks to the increasing globalization of businesses, translation for HR has developed into its own translation specialty – and the need is here to stay.  

For companies with either domestic and overseas employees or foreign language speakers in-house – utilizing professional, CAT assisted translation for HR documents offers many benefits. Easily accessible quality communication, improved recruiting and retention strategies, decreased cost, and the elimination of legal risks are all reasons to begin bridging the gaps through HR translation.