Plush Text Communications

Workplace Safety: How Translators Help Keep Your Employees Safe

Posted on 28. Apr, 2010 by Ashleigh in Blog

Today is one of the most important days of the year that many people have probably never heard of.

Here in Canada, it’s called National Mourning Day, and it has been recognized annually on April 28 since 1991. It’s a day that recognizes and pays tributes to the many workers who are injured or killed while on the job.

In 2008, 1,036* workplace deaths were recorded in Canada, which is about 2.43 deaths per day. In addition, another 942,478* workers were injured or fell ill on the job.
Workplace statistics are frightening and sobering.

In a globalized economy and world, large companies are often a kaleidoscope of different people, languages, cultures, and lifestyles. This also means that they are home to a variety of audiences who very likely do not all speak the same language. They may speak enough English, French or other major language of the host country to get by, and carry out the tasks required of their jobs, but they may not be fluent enough to understand and follow complex technical documents that use specialized vocabulary.

Since the construction, chemical and manufacturing industries in particular rely heavily on technical manuals, safety documents and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs), workers in these workplaces are especially vulnerable to workplace injuries. The importance of providing accurate, faithful translations of the material is absolutely critical. As you can imagine, this would be the very worst time to rely on machine translation software, which could provide a stilted, and likely faulty, translation of your documents.

It’s critical that companies provide information in at least the official languages of the country or countries where it is doing business. Here in Canada, that means French and English. In the United States, it might mean English and Spanish. Large populations of speakers should also be represented, with Mandarin, Punjabi, Arabic, Italian and Dutch some good choices here in Canada. Companies have a responsibility to ensure that their employees understand the risks relevant to what they are doing. Companies also need to ensure their employees understand any occupational health and safety procedures they need to follow if something unexpected does happen.

It’s also critical that the translations you give your employees are clear, easy to understand, and use a suitable level of language. Don’t forget to consider the different dialects of a language: the Spanish spoken in Spain is very different from the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Ecuador. And where relevant, your translation documents should also be accompanied by appropriate graphics because—and as anyone who has ever tried to put a piece of Ikea furniture together can attest—a picture really can be worth a thousand words.

Today is an important day for language professionals everywhere because our job as language experts, communicators and translators is made even more important by the reality that an inaccurate translation could play the difference between health and illness, or life and death, for workers here at home or abroad.

* Statistics were drawn from the website of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety: http://www.ccohs.ca/events/mourning/

Tags: healthandsafety, translation, Translation profession, workplacesafety