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Hi! is translated into nine languages and sent to 36,000 employees. Producing a magazine that works in several different languages is a real challenge. Here are my 10 top tips: 1. Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince is 120 pages longer in French than it is in English. You don’t have the luxury of adding extra pages, though, so remember this when writing and designing. Agree with your designer a word count that allows for other languages to run longer – and stick to it! 2. Always get translations checked by a colleague in each country. The approval process works much more smoothly if you ask them to amend a Word document first, and then check over one pdf 3. Make sure your translators have a country contact to phone/email with queries. Building relationships between translators and countries makes for a confident process 4. Remember to send your translators the final version so that they build knowledge for the next issue 5. Involve in-country communicators from the start in content planning, so that you share ownership of the end product 6. Keep a matrix of content per issue, by subject matter and country contributor. That way you can be sure that everyone appears in the magazine during the year 7. Humour doesn’t translate, nor do colloquialisms. Think ‘global audience’ at all times, especially with headlines 8. Agree a style and stick to it. American or English English? Euros, $ or £? Use whatever is appropriate for your company: you don’t need to translate every figure into every currency 9. Make friends and contacts in every country you work with. Get to know who always meets deadlines and who you may need to remind or persuade 10. Never attempt to carry news. The best multilanguage magazines reach all their readers at the same time – which means long lead times to allow for approval and design in the primary language and, subsequently, translations. Schedule everything to avoid translators’ rework and version confusion. © Copyright CiB |
