Overview

This guide is intended for administrators who have configured Multilingual Support with On-the-fly translation and are ready to leverage dynamic translation for employee communication campaigns. Learn more by reading OTF Employee Comms.

Authors of campaigns must follow these guidelines in order to minimize incorrect translations that may happen from English to various languages. Fundamentally, language translation is a challenge even for expert human translators so even state-of-the-art translation models aren’t able to perform as intended, at times.

Guidelines

1. Proofread. Use proper grammar, including subject-verb agreement and proper verb tense. Check your spelling.
   1. Poor English will produce poor translations.
2. Use clear and concise language, and provide context in order to avoid ambiguity.
   1. Don’t use too many modifying adjectives. Excessively complex sentences are hard.
   2. Use active voice; some languages require this and you don’t want the machine translation to have to guess who or what does the action.
      1. ❌  Invoices must be submitted by August 1.
      2. ✅ You must submit your invoices by August 1.
      3. ✅ Managers must submit invoices by August 1.
   3. Never leave off direct objects. This may be grammatically impossible in the translation.
      1. ❌  It is encouraged to update by Friday.
      2. ✅ You are encouraged to update your operating system by Friday.
   4. Unintended ambiguity can create translation errors
      1. ❌ “User selected to resolve the issue” - “selected” here could mean “The user [who was] selected” or “The user [had] selected”
      2. ✅ The user chose to resolve the issue.
   5. The denser your phrases are, the higher the chances that the machine translation will misinterpret them - to an English speaker the intended meaning may be clear, but a machine can be misled.
      1. ❌  record past time off
      2. ✅ Record my time off from a recent absence
      3. ✅ A record of the time off I have taken in the past
      4. ✅ A record of my team’s time off from some time period in the past
      5. ✅ Stop recording times from the past
3. Minimize idiomatic language.
   1. Especially avoid partial idioms
      1. ❌ “It’s been ages!”
      2. ✅ It’s been a long time since you sent me a message.
   2. Expect that extended metaphors will not translate well. At best, the extended metaphor will be lost; at worst, non-English speaking employees will be confused about how they missed the announcement that their company is now engaging in aerospace engineering.
      1. ❌ As we embark on this exhilarating journey through H2, remember that every one of us plays an integral role in launching this rocket. From our engineers and product developers to our sales and marketing teams, each contribution adds to the momentum that propels us forward. Let’s harness the energy of our collective ambition, fuel our passion with purpose, and navigate the challenges ahead with resilience and determination. The countdown has begun, and the horizon is brimming with possibilities. Together, we are more than just a team; we are pioneers on a mission to redefine what’s possible.
4. Provide context for possibly niche terminology.
   1. ❌ We have an important update on RTO.
   2. ✅ We have an important update to our RTO (Return to Office) policy.
   3. ✅ We have an important update to our Recovery Time Objective (RTO) policy.
5. Use consistent terminology
   1. Ex: If you use “employee” or “team member,” always use the same term.
6. Avoid slang and other creative use of words
   1. Be careful of corporate jargon. Because these terms are so widely used in corporate settings, it’s easy to forget that they are metaphorical and may not translate well. For example, the translations of “needle mover,” “drill down,” “churn” might invoke images of injections, carpentry, and butter.
   2. Custom terminology has the risk of being untranslatable - for example, at Moveworks, employees are called “Movesters”, and there aren’t any equivalents in other languages.
   3. Jokes involving plays on words won’t translate.
7. Check for cultural sensitivity
   1. Short greetings that feel fun and friendly in English often cause translation mistakes (usually because they are translated literally) - “Hey there!” can get translated as “Hey - Over there!”
   2. Formality may be interpreted differently across locales - e.g. informal English is friendly, but in translation it may cause offense in a business setting.
      1. Norms around how to refer to people in the workplace vary across cultures.
   3. Your carefully-chosen emoji may mean something completely different in another culture.