Language: Lost in translation

There is also another risk that may be less obvious. Some territories or global business sectors will have equally advanced concepts of risk management to the UK or the US but will, even so, present their own unique challenges around communication. 

 

For instance, there may be very different ways of viewing compliance and prioritising risk controls. These advanced legal and employment systems will have their own approaches to risk management — it is not a matter of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

 

These management approaches or assumptions form part of what Geert Hofstede might describe as ‘mental programs’ or mindset.¹ Both culturally and technically, there is no right or wrong approach — there is simply a difference. This applies to risk appetite generally as well as specific health and safety issues. 

 

To simply believe and/or expect a message will be understood and followed in the way the home territory would do so is, in reality, a risk that is not always recognised or controlled. 

 

Tower of Babel

Translation is the process of taking a source-language text and providing an equivalent target-language text. In risk management terms, it is more than achieving an equivalence in the target language and more than simply finding a fluent speaker. Both are common misconceptions and can, even with the best of intentions, lead to the mistranslation of safety critical documents.

 

When different languages are involved, the translation process can create fundamental misunderstandings within a business. Native speakers may not have the knowledge to translate technical language accurately, be that legal, financial, scientific or engineering texts. 

 

Technical translation normally has two distinct meanings. One relates to the translation of technical manuals and in some sectors is known as O and M (operations and maintenance) manuals. While the manufacturer may have produced translations to a high standard in terms of the user’s understanding, for safety critical operations specialist advice should be sought in the target language. This will ensure that local engineering and regulations have been captured in the technical translation. 

 

The second meaning refers to any translation that requires knowledge over and above that of a general native speaker. This would include legal, insurance, engineering and scientific documents. For instance, an effective legal translator needs to have a good working knowledge of both the source and target legal systems. If they don’t, the translation will be, at best, incomplete and, at worst, misleading. 

 

Let’s take the Tribunal de Grande Instance, one of the senior courts in France, as an example. One possible translation of certain procedures concerning their work would be to draw parallels to those of the Crown Court in England (or the Sheriff Court if the readership is in Scotland). However, the reality is that England (including Wales in this context), Scotland and France all have very different legal and, therefore, judicial systems. Consequently, all translations would need to consider the context of what is being said in the document, rather than looking for a target institution to align the reader’s comprehension to.

 

This also underlines potential flaws in translation software. They may be excellent at translating words and phrases but may not be very good at translating technical contexts. Equally, an excellent translator who is a fluent English or French speaker may not understand what either the Tribunal de Grande Instance or a Crown Court does. 

 

The same applies to many engineering or scientific topics where, to complicate matters further, there may also be different local approaches in the design or application of internationally accepted concepts, sometimes due to different regulatory interpretations. Yet some organisations may still give technical documents to bilingual administrators or general translation agencies to look at.

 

In the English language, different technical meanings will apply to different English-speaking cultures. For example, in terms of occupational health research, the use of medical terminology and treatment plans may be perceived very differently in the US compared to the UK. The source ‘translation’ in this context would be to tailor the information to a target professional so that it means something to them in the way they can deliver health surveillance and treatment plans in the UK. 

 

The same principle applies to, say, French, Spanish and Arabic where the adoption of these languages by different countries will sometimes have varying subtle degrees of linguistic difference, for example, between French and Québécois French (the first language in some parts of Canada). Without recognising these potential differences, an organisation might unwittingly create problems later on. What might appear to be effective communication between different parties may not actually be so.  

 

H&S professional’s role

Translation is only one element of communication. Culture has many definitions but relates to a shared set of assumptions or behaviours. In another sense, business culture is about the way things are done in any organisation or sector.  Culture, communication and the effectiveness of translation, in the broadest sense of the term, all feed into one another.

 

The risk in health and safety is that any ineffective communication may not be immediately apparent, especially in a global context, and thereby can form a silent cluster of hazards. 

 

Senior management, especially in global organisations, needs a clear brief from its health and safety professionals. The alternative is that strategic decisions on health and safety may be based on incomplete perceptions of risk. This might include believing that the whole global organisation views risks, compliance and controls in the same way that the home corporate culture does. Such views may be coloured by looking at translated documents.

 

For this reason, all managers need to agree explicitly that communication is vital to health and safety; that it covers all aspects of individual and collective responses; and that it is not a solo activity. They also need to agree that individual mindsets should not determine how health and safety is prioritised or understood. 

 

To put this into context, consider how behavioural management theories have had an impact on health and safety thinking. Two examples are the way that safe systems of work are now designed or the way that accident investigation is structured. 

 

Yet, arguably, the broader gamut of behavioural management theory hasn’t been that influential on health and safety professionals compared to some other sectors. 

 

To help a health and safety professional better understand ‘culture’ in a way that they could speak to the boardroom about it in terms of the practicalities of risk perception, there are two approaches, among others, that might be considered.

 

The first is Geert Hofstede’s theories of cultural dimensions and the second is Harry C. Triandis’s theories of cultural syndromes.^2,3 Both analyse regional, cultural traits in broad terms but they can also be interpreted in terms of risk appetite. In other words, they look at the cultural differences that exist (what is accepted at the level or possibility of risk) and the controls that are put in place to maintain what is considered as acceptable risk in that culture.

 

Hofstede talks about the notion of uncertainty avoidance being stronger in some cultures and that one can use this knowledge to determine if doing business in a certain country or sector requires particular communication strategies.  

 

Triandis talks about what he describes as tight versus loose cultures. By this he means, whether one is expected to stick to the norm in the workplace or whether one is encouraged to deviate. The latter might be seen as more risk taking. 

 

There are similarities to theories about leadership styles. An organisation will send its managers to different offices around the world but while certain management styles will be successful in some territories, they could be potentially disastrous in others. These are sometimes referred to as transformational and transactional differences in style but there are many other leadership theories.

 

The main point to consider is that technical input is only part of the global health and safety issue. Risk assessment really begins at policy and leadership level and the desire to increase value in the organisation. The silent risks of mindsets and communication need to be accepted first; after that, the technical input of health and safety management will have more immediate relevance to the strategic decision makers. 

 

There are a number of solutions — or points of awareness — that can be suggested to strategic management to overcome these challenges.

 

Risk approach

Risk assessment is generally accepted as the core of all Anglo-American health and safety management systems. Cross-cultural issues should be considered as part of a health and safety policy and, in turn, any specific risks or mindsets that the global operation entails.

 

Global organisations or those with a global customer base need to consider the potential risks that could arise from differences in health and safety compliance. 

 

This is vital if senior management decides that reputational risks to the organisation or its brand(s) are more important than the risk of prosecution or being successfully sued. If it is the former, then this makes ongoing global compliance an even greater priority. 

 

Typical approaches include ensuring that all parts of the global organisation operate the home compliance system. However, this should entail a gap analysis in each jurisdiction because, in some instances, local requirements may be more legally binding than the home system. 

 

Sometimes the local requirements for health and safety are less stringent than the home system. Realistic timescales for achieving an acceptable level of compliance need to be agreed with senior management. This isn’t just to manage strategic expectations but also to enable them. 

 

Senior managers can then, if they so wish, have a more in-depth conversation with the entire global management team about its risk mindset. The aim would be to achieve greater consistency in safety issues and less concurrent risk to the organisation’s bottom line. 

 

Local managers need to be properly trained and briefed so they know what is expected of them in terms of managing health and safety. Clearly defined performance measures are needed to identify any key shortfalls in the progress made towards targets across different global operations.

 

The customer is not always necessarily right in safety terms. If there are joint ventures or close collaboration between customers, then an alignment with health and safety expectations needs to be achieved. 

 

At a strategic level, this may need to be agreed by the senior management teams who must discuss any issues that this could raise. When all parties work to their own advanced, regulated, local safety systems, for instance, a British company having staff on secondment to a German company, there could be a greater likelihood for issues to arise. Risk assessments should consider the risk of translations in the broadest sense of the term.

 

Even when a company uses a universal language for business, there will always be an element of translations or mindset interpretation going on at local level. Just because the board meeting is held in English or French doesn’t mean every employee, contractor or customer is speaking the same language. This, of course, has broader risk implications than health and safety.

 

If translations are given to bilingual administrative staff or general translation agencies, procedures should always be in place to ensure text is suitable for a translator without specific business or technical knowledge, for example, routine business correspondence, marketing reports or media research materials might all fall into a general, non-technical category. 

 

Any technical translation should go to specialist agencies or bilingual technical staff, for example, a bilingual electrical engineer who is familiar with regulatory and design differences in both the source and target territory. 

 

Where an organisation appoints ‘country managers’ or local directors, these individuals should have the right technical background if they are being expected to translate local regulatory and other stakeholder expectations.

 

O and M and other technical manuals that have been translated from another language by the manufacturer should still be treated with caution and a local review against local regulatory requirements should be considered. 

 

If an organisation’s policy states that its contracts require English as the primary language, should any contractual dispute arise this will not protect it from any reputational damage or safety issues that arise. They will simply be sued after the event. This timeline is sometimes misunderstood and strategic policy must take these risks on board. 

 

The issues discussed above relate to high-level global mindsets and communications from a health and safety perspective. They do not include local, verbal communication issues or risk specialisms, such as fire safety, where global cultural and regulatory perspectives can be markedly different. Of course, these are all relevant components to defining any communication risks or global health and safety policy goals.   

 

The risk of translation needs to be understood and, when strategically managed, can make health and safety communication more effective through understanding the actual cultural meanings rather than just looking at the words.

 

References

Alan Field is managing director of Highdown Management Services Ltd