Inclusion is Crucial for Effective Multilingual Events
January 11, 2024
When you are planning an event that will include people who speak different languages, carefully consider your needs and acquire the language resources and event equipment necessary to deliver your message to the entire group. In fact, identifying the exact languages needed ahead of time is a pre-requisite for determining the format for each speaker’s presentation.
Living and doing business in the global village means the age-old practice of delivering messages in one language may not be well received. Event attendees today expect to be included, and equitable meetings begin with proper planning. From event notifications to each speaker's presentation, your messaging should be professionally presented.
Whether you intend to use PowerPoint or other presentation software, important materials need to be accurately translated into multiple languages, including event agendas, handouts, and slides. To ensure your event runs seamlessly, get your event materials and presentation scripts to translators and interpreters as soon as possible. That way, you’ll have time to make changes or corrections.
Hosting a multilingual event can be challenging.
Since different cultures may react differently to your messaging, it is important to consider using an event planner that is experienced in managing multilingual events of a similar size. Even enterprise level organizations typically do not have the resources in-house to conduct totally inclusive events in multiple languages. Plus, interpretation equipment like booths, portable listening devices and microphone discussion systems may be needed and sometimes even for smaller events like marketing roll-outs or international business meetings.
Communications Strategies for Multilingual Events
As the host of the event, it is important to embrace the fact that you have the opportunity to deliver your message to attendees that may not speak the same language. That starts with recognizing that your speakers are actually communicating more than just the words of a script when they have the podium. So it is important to pay close attention to their needs for verbal, non-verbal, visual, and written multilingual communication. An increase in inclusivity means:
- Better Understanding of the Message – Chances are you wouldn’t be conducting a multilingual event or meeting without a specific need to deliver very important messaging to those in attendance. Creating a culturally inclusive environment requires a lot more than using machine translation. It involves recognizing and valuing the distinct cultural differences in your participant’s decision making processes.
- Increased Attendee Satisfaction – By celebrating the diversity of each group, you can help attendees achieve a higher level of satisfaction. Fostering cultural inclusiveness requires an understanding of the communication skills needed to bridge the attendees’ cultural gaps. It is this level of cultural sensitivity that can help speakers deliver content that is personalized to participants with diverse backgrounds.
- Better Comprehension of Content – If you goal is achieve optimum delivery of your message, it is crucial to convey all the content presented with the highest level of cultural accuracy. This is very important for diverse events, especially those with underrepresented groups, where your goal is to ensure better comprehension by delivering content that fits into their language, syntax, grammar, and behavior.
- Increased Participant Engagement – Professional interpretation and translation of content encourages a more open collaboration between attendees who do not share the same language. So, it is critical that you eliminate as much of the language barrier to create an enhanced sense of unity where attendees are comfortable exchanging ideas about the content being delivered. Code-switching works well for smaller groups.
As a multilingual event planner, it is important to celebrate the diversity of your participants to foster a sense of inclusion and group unity. This helps to ensure your messaging is correctly understood and that all attendees feel comfortable to express their opinions and ideas. After all, any multilingual event is a special opportunity for your business or organization to reap the benefits of bridging cultural divides by helping participants better understand concepts and content.
Contact ProLingo to Discuss Your Event
Overcoming the challenges of delivering your message to a culturally diverse group can be challenging. That’s where ProLingo can help. So, put our decades of experience in delivering professional interpretation and translation equipment, as well as our proven approach to event planning and management, to work for you. Increased inclusivity requires a broad understanding of content delivery for better comprehension and engagement.
In today’s post-pandemic world, there has been a growth of virtual and hybrid meetings that have also increased the number of attendees who speak a different language and more specific dialects of standard languages. While human interpretation and translation solutions are still the most effective method for accurate delivery of content, ProLingo was also a leader in meeting the growing demand for high-tech solutions with our remote simultaneous interpretation app.
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To ensure your event's communication is clear and crisp, let our experienced staff guide you in choosing your interpretation equipment, translation services, and portable listening devices. With an established network of providers, ProLingo can deliver the highest quality of standards for multilingual events anywhere in the world. Contact an event specialist today at 800-287-9755.
