In any business environment, English is often the language of communication. However, there are instances where the English language cannot suffice. Some meetings call for the use of multiple languages. Where you have attendees cutting across different countries and languages, you have to cater to their comfort.
Getting a simultaneous interpretation service for a multilingual meeting is a smart choice but there are other strategies to explore. Meetings involving multilingual audiences often go wrong in some aspects. However, there are strategies to make your next multilingual business meeting successful.
Strategies for a Successful Multilingual Business Meeting
When your business grows, and your brand crosses borders, you have to be prepared for your audience. When you have meetings with attendees from different countries and languages, implement these strategies to make it a huge success.
- Get the Right Team
The right team will be one that has members across languages. You can have people from the represented countries mount the reception.
It will help if the registration team is multilingual. It will make room for a more culturally diversified welcoming. The chances of mispronunciation of names will be limited, at least.
Get your team culturally trained for the event.
- Multilingual Acceptance
Everyone needs to have a sense of belonging to function well in any environment. Psychological factors play a significant part in the success of any meeting. Make your attendees feel welcomed and included.
Get a team consisting of representatives from the population you expect. You and your team should represent the global audience in your planning. For instance, if you have flags in the meeting venue, it should represent the diverse countries in attendance.
Also, there should be clocks representing time in various countries. From the onset, disseminate information about the meeting in different languages. The time for the meeting should be announced in different time zones.
There are several other ways to display inclusion. The goal is to include everyone in everything.
- Get Multilingual Speakers
Get speakers from the countries represented in the meeting. If, for any reason, it will not be feasible, get interpreters for the languages.
The meeting can be arranged to make room for simultaneous interpretations. Also, subtitles can be provided in an additional language. Another strategy is to make videos available in several languages.
It will foster a sense of connection among members of the meeting and make them feel welcome.
- Event Collateral
You should print materials for the meeting in the various languages represented in the meeting. With this, participants will be able to follow the proceedings and understand them better.
There are situations where the budget cannot cover printing the materials in several languages. In this case, you can make them available online. Attendees can access the documents and print them in preparation for the meeting.
You can also circulate the materials in PDF or document formats.
Conclusion
Business meetings should benefit your company and promote your brand. But, it may not be the case if there is a breach in communication. These strategies will make the communication process smooth when you have a multilingual audience.
