Claes Gefvenberg said:
Hey Jen. I know that problem.
We are located in Sweden, our owners are Finnish, the corporate language is English and a fair part of our workforce have Finnish ancestry. Well, you get the picture...
Our Written procedures are in Swedish only... Except for the manual: We have one Swedish and one English version. I am deeply grateful that nobody requested a Finnish version, because I don't understand a word of it.
I found two similar threads. Have a peek:
Non English Speaking Operators - Bi-lingual lead people? Suggestions?
Bilingual Documentation
/Claes
Let me address this from a Document Management standpoint.
Recognize that no document in your organization is "exclusively" for one language or another. Every document is for the entire organization, regardless whether everyone in the organization reads every document.
(How many company bookkeepers read Work Instructions for an engine lathe?)
Thus said, the organization needs a mechanism where every document which may be translated from the organization's official language is automatically updated when the official language version is updated. The simplest way to do this is to keep the master copy together with translations and adapt the process of modifying the original official language document to include an approval process for the translations into various languages the organization may use.
It is not an "instant" process to convert all legacy documents into this system, but it is important to be consistent.
A very simple analogy is the multilingual labeling used on products sold simultaneously in French speaking Canada, English speaking Canada and USA, and Spanish speaking Mexico, Central, and South America, as well as Portugese speaking Brazil. The label or instruction book frequently contains ALL languages. Similarly, in-house organization documents should all be created in the official organization language
and the various translations necessary to suit the organization and the revision levels kept the same.
Thus,
- Work Instruction for Running an Engine Lathe would be created in the organization's official language (for instance, Urdu.)
- Then, prior to release, translations of the document would be created in the languages required.
- Finally, Original and translations are issued under the same document number (the translations are addenda.)
If, as is probable, a translation slipup is found, its severity and effect on the document is determined whether to let it wait until the next revision of the original for fixing or to issue a new revision to cover the translation error.
This is similar to dealing with minor spelling and typographical errors in any documents.
I have seen blueprints approved by FAA and the products are flying where the description says
- "ariospce" instead of "aerospace"
whereas
- saying "inch" when you mean "centimeter" will bring everything to a halt until the document is corrected and everyone notified.