When you are preparing a meeting about a specific topic in a multilingual context, one of the approaches you can take is to prepare materials in different languages. Whether you send the materials to the participants in advance, or provide it to them at the meeting, this tool will make it much easier to follow the conversation. It is especially useful if you are discussing a specific matter, such as a new policy proposal, or a new project idea, and you need to present a lot of information. While you would prepare the materials in any case, the multilingual context requires you to take the extra step of translating (either by a human or a machine).
You will need:
You will need to prepare the written material, create and print out translations.
Time:
The use of multilingual materials will prolong the preparations by the time needed for translation (possibly minimally if you are using machine translation) only if you have already planned to prepare some written material for the discussion. Otherwise, you will need to calculate the extra time it takes to put the main points on paper, translate and print them out.
Step-by-step
1 – Prepare the document, in your expert language, that you want to discuss with the group. It can be, for example, the full text of a new law, but it can also be a summary of main points.
2 – Decide on the translation method- If this is something nuanced and specific, have a persone translate it, or at least check the machine translation.
3 – Print out a sufficient quantity of translated materials. If you are using more than two languages, there might be people who would benefit from having two translations if they speak two languages, so they can cross-check if something is not well translated.
4 – Give out the materials. During the meeting, always point out exactly which part of the text you are currently discussing.
Tips
A complex text, such as a court judgement or a new law proposal, can also benefit from the translation in a less jargon-heavy, or even in easy language, even if the group shares the expert language. This makes it easier for the group to follow the conversation, but also to educate themselves on the exact meaning of an obscure legal term or project lingo.
It is good practice to have the source and target material presented side-by-side, maybe even divided in paragraphs, so that the participants can orient themselves more easily.
