Multilingual communication comes with its share of benefits and challenges. Often, people tend to explore the benefits more than the challenges. In return, one can get discouraged and lose the resultant benefits after encountering the challenges.
To ensure you get the best from multilingual communication, let’s explore the challenges you can encounter. Also, we will delve into the best practices for multilingual communication to ensure that you enjoy and make the best of every bit of the exercise.
Challenges of Multilingual Communication
Even though the following challenges may appear significant, their impact can result in long-term effects:
Being a Center of Unnecessary Attention
If you speak a local language as a non-local individual, you attract unnecessary attention. Some locals can ask you how to mention things in the second language you know, while others can stare at you as if you are a stranger.
Sometimes, showing people what they do not know can be fun. However, prolonged periods of doing it can be uncomfortable. Notably, some people can joke around with you instead of showing a genuine urge to learn a new language.
Embarrassing Situations
Sometimes, your superiors from your culture can reprimand you using your mother tongue. In such a scenario, those who do not understand the language can know that you are in trouble by watching the tone and gestures of your superiors.
If such an incident happens, your colleagues and peers may perceive that every time your superiors speak your language, they are reprimanding you. Such is quite an embarrassment. Also, it might discourage you from using non-local language to prevent the identification of the times you get reproach from your superiors.
Getting Wrong Autocorrects
When you use your phone using a non-local language, your phone or any other gadget that autocorrects when you write can autocorrect you in two different languages. Notably, it can be annoying when you intend to write using your local language, and a gadget keeps on autocorrecting you in the other language you know.
Getting wrong autocorrects can also result in a waste of time. In other words, you can spend significant time trying to write again and select the option of using your preferred language.
In the worst scenario, getting autocorrects can make you send a wrong message. Sometimes such a message could be to your superiors. If they get a wrongly-autocorrected message, they may perceive that you are not taking them seriously.
Becoming a Human Machine Translator
Even though translation apps, such as Google Translate, exist, people can make you a human-machine translator. They can forget they can get a solution from free and readily available translation tools and rush to you whenever they want a translation in a language you know.
While it can be fun sometimes, other times, it can be annoying to have people bother you now and then with translation issues. You can find yourself wasting a lot of time and getting un-endless interruptions.
Proving Your Nationality Often
After learning a different language at a young age, you become fluent in it over time. As a result, people may think you are from another country, and they may inquire about it from you from time to time.
This experience is quite annoying because your local peers may seem to doubt your nationality. Also, you may keep flashing your identity card to prove you are in your country of birth.
Getting a Novice Consideration After a Slight Error
Sometimes, you can err while saying some words in your second language. Even though the error could be genuine and one-off, a native speaker may consider you a novice trying to learn the language. This scenario can be frustrating, especially considering the time and money you have invested in learning the new language.
However, your local peers may not be able to realize you made a mistake when mentioning a word in your second language. Only a native can identify you have erred.
Getting Perceived as a “Show-Off”
Sometimes, your friends may think you are a “show off” because of speaking a second language. This situation can occur especially when you are among friends who can speak your second language, which your friends do not know.
Indeed, it isn’t very pleasant when your peers and colleagues try to suppress your knowledge of your second language. However, learning a new language is a skill everyone should congratulate you on instead of getting the label “a show off”.
Becoming a Victim of Code Switching
After becoming fluent in a new language, you can switch between two languages or code-switching. In return, you can appear informal. Also, you can become a confusing speaker, especially when your audience does not understand the second language.
Best Practices for Multilingual Communication
Now that we have explored the challenges you get as a multilingual speaker, what best practices should you employ to communicate effectively? Is engaging the providers of translation services one of them? Let’s see:
Speak Your Colleagues’ Language
Speaking the language of your peers or colleagues is one way of earning their trust and respect. Doing so does not arouse any curiosity among your peers about your knowledge of a new language.
The same thing applies whenever you get in the company of people who understand your second language. If you are fluent in your second language, it is impossible to get noticed that you can speak a different language.
To achieve this objective successfully, you must employ accuracy and clarity when communicating in either of the languages you know. Code-switching and the use of inaccurate words depict you as a multilingual person.
Respect Your Audience
We live in a diverse world regarding culture, customs, and traditions. If you want to fit in during multilingual communication, you must understand the culture of the groups that speak the languages you know.
If you want to respect your audience, you must become culturally competent. This skill calls for you to respect other people’s customs and traditions, especially now that you can speak their language.
To be culturally competent, learn how people from the language you speak expect you to behave. Also, understand the tiniest errors that can make you offend them. If you do so, you can improve communication with your audience and earn their trust and respect.
Notably, understanding your target audience’s culture is a pillar supporting positive communication. So, try to understand your audience’s culture to avoid any communication conflicts.
Be Short and Precise
Your communication in multilingual settings should be short and precise. In return, you can manage to translate the message. For this reason, your sentences must be short and simple. Also, your messages must be short, easy to repeat, and memorable.
If you become short and precise during multilingual communication, you cannot stand as someone trying to show off. Remember, giving your audience too much information in a language it does not understand makes it lose interest in you. However, being short and precise attracts your audience towards you, and it wishes to learn more from you.
Create Multilingual Style Guides and Glossaries
If you want to stand as a pro during multilingual communication, you must maintain the same voice and personality. In other words, you must be consistent in the terms and phrases you use during communication. How do we achieve this objective?
To achieve the said objective, developing a style guide sets the rules for formatting, writing, and designing documents. Also, it can help you stick to one way of presenting yourself whenever you communicate.
On the other hand, a glossary arms you with terms you will always use during communication. It also provides you with the meaning of the terms, their acronyms, and examples of how and where to use the terms. Lastly, a glossary can provide you with a translation of more words and phrases to spruce up your communication style.
Avoid Colloquialism
Colloquialism, jargon, and slang are highly cultural-specific. For this reason, it isn’t easy to translate them across several languages. Whenever you employ colloquialisms during multilingual communication, you leave your audience confused.
To avoid colloquialisms, use precise words. Also, try to use generic words to avoid confusing those who do not come from the culture that owns the slang you use.
Avoid Humor, Politics, and Religious Issues
When communicating in a multilingual setting, always avoid political and religious matters and humor. Remember, these issues remain contentious, and they can trigger unnecessary arguments. Regarding humor, opt to use it sparingly. Alternatively, avoid it at all costs. Notably, what is humor to you can be offensive to a person from a different culture.
Show Your Face
Do you know that face-to-face communication can give rise to up to 93% effective conversations? This form of communication features non-verbal cues that add value to the words that one says. So, if you don’t want people to take you as a joke when speaking a new language, express your words using non-verbal cues.
The Bottom Line
According to LatinoBridge, a provider of Translation Services, adopting the best practices during multilingual communication is the solution to several challenges faced during the same activity.
Now that you understand the challenges and best practices for multilingual communication, it is time to fine-tune your communication skills.
