We are a 3PL company that has a strong Spanish-speaking team. Although they have a basic understanding of English, we want to be able to provide them with SOPs they are more comfortable reading and understanding. If we translate our SOPs to Spanish, what should the approval/signature process look like to ensure the documents have been translated properly?
SOPs in a Different Language
- Thread starter gpalow
- Start date
The last translation/localization company I worked with allowed us an internal validation step after they were done translating and validating on their end. We had an in-house person that was technically proficient, knowledgable in our product and was fluent in the source language. Everything went through him for a final check before we accepted the work.
Especially because, unknown to higher ups, chances are, you have a higher than normal undetected percentage of illiterate workers.
Who are extremely adept at hiding that fact.
Randy
Super Moderator
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, what you said!!!!
I ran into this problem very early in my career. I was a quality engineer and started introducing SPC on our extrusion lines to control the length of automotive weatherstrips. I started seeing some unusual readings from one of the lines and investigated. I learned that the operator taking the measurements was illiterate and was copying other peoples' average/range calculations because they could not make the calculations themselves.
We discovered a similar issue. We were developing a User Manual for a smartphone app and wanted a quick test to give us a baseline feel for usability. Recruited two people from another production area randomly to read the Manual and answer 5 questions. It was disastrous. They could not understand our Manual and its written to an 8th-grade comprehension level...uggh
Johnnymo62
Haste Makes Waste
We do our Spanish translations internally, so far. Our SOPs are in Excel and we used it's translation feature. Then we had a Spanish speaking Quality Technician verify them and make any changes she deemed necessary. We have three different dialects of Spanish spoken here and the QT had to find words that would work best for everyone. It's very time consuming.