Truth 50. Readers are global: Try not to confuse them

You may recall that a few years back, the Mars Climate Orbiter failed to get to the correct altitude for its orbit and was destroyed, due to a little misunderstanding. It seems that the engineering team had calculated some crucial data in English measurement units, while NASA’s navigation team had expected to receive more conventional metric units and used the data that way.

Basic communication gaffes can litter the path to mutual understanding, and as globalization breezes along, the problem can only get worse.

Many of us work for organizations that have branches, collaborators, or markets all over the world. So promotional materials, company information, instruction manuals, employee communications, and more need to be translated as soon as written. At the same time, more and more people around the world are using English as the language of international business (and one billion of them already do), or read it as a second language. Also important: Most U.S. companies are multicultural mini-worlds today. Appearing to disregard the sensitivities of employees who are not native English speakers is extremely undesirable.

Bottom line: If we write for these readers or for translation into another language, we need to be aware of the ways in which our words may mislead, confuse, or confound. Here are a few ways to avoid doing that.

Humor, idioms, slang—The simplest thing to do with humor is to skip it completely when writing for readers whose first language is not English. It’s too easy to be misunderstood, and business writing needs to be as clear as possible. It’s also too easy to offend someone with misguided humor that may seem funny here but can hurt feelings elsewhere.

The same thing applies to idioms and slang expressions: Just say no. An idiom like rolling out the red carpet, for example, may leave a foreign reader clueless as to what the writer really meant and may also have an entirely different meaning in the reader’s home language.

Contractions—Contractions may make your writing seem less stuffy, but if a foreign reader doesn’t understand I’ll or we’re, your otherwise well-written article or instruction manual may not be read at all.

Acronyms—Don’t use them! Always spell them out. It’s usual in American writing to spell out the acronym when it’s used for the first time and then use the acronym later in the piece. Unless your article is extremely short or you’re writing for people who use the acronym daily (and you’re sure about that), spell out the acronym each time.

Industry jargon—How about infotainment, results-oriented metrics, modularize, and repurpose? If you need an interpreter, think how your readers in another culture might react.

Word choice—Foreign and English as a Second Language (ESL) audiences provide a whole additional reason to make simplicity your watchword. Foreign readers (and many local ones) may get tangled up in complex constructions, with clauses and phrases that modify and confuse. Aim to be unambiguous and cut all unnecessary words ruthlessly. Choose the simplest words, the one- and two-syllable ones. Make sentences and paragraphs short. Use plenty of subheads to break up text.

Make it say-able—Besides helping you keep your sentence structure simple, reading the material aloud will underscore any words that could be difficult for foreign-language speakers.

Know the protocols—Many cultures employ specific formalities in business letters, and in the interests of good relations, you would be wise to check them out when these challenges fall to your lot. Use common sense to avoid needless offenses. For example, our neighbors to the north and south most definitely do not think of the United States as “America,” and neither does most of the world.

Get your work checked—If your company has a resource to advise you on tactful cross-cultural communication, use it. Or, find people who speak other languages to comment on your translate-ability, and tell you if any unintended messages lurk. Some languages, such as Spanish, have variations depending on the country or region in which it’s spoken, so check your work with a person who is familiar with the area you’re targeting. You can also do your homework through research. An excellent book on writing for translation is listed in Resources (available online on the book’s Web site).

Measurements, temperature—Because much of the world uses the metric system, it’s a good idea to give the metric equivalents in parentheses for distances, weights, and volumes. When citing temperatures, use both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

Times, dates—Many countries and the U.S. military operate on a 24-hour clock, so provide the equivalent to 2:00 p.m. as 1400 hours. If you do use the 12-hour clock, keep in mind that most countries use a period to separate hours and minutes, rather than the colon that we use (7.25 a.m. vs. 7:25 a.m.).

It’s best to spell out dates, because the numeric system varies in other parts of the world. For example, 10/6/2004 can mean October 6, 2004, or June 10, 2004. And, some countries start dates with the year, then the month and day: 2004/10/6. One more thing: In some cultures, Monday is considered the first day of the week, so be more specific than writing, “The meeting will be held the first of the week.”

Numbers, money—In many countries, numbers of four or more digits are written with a period instead of the comma that we use (3.456 vs. 3,456). And, in turn, these countries use the comma as a decimal point, so it’s best either to put the equivalent in parentheses after the number or just to spell the number out. There’s also a difference in the way we use billion (a 1 with 9 zeros after it) and the way most other countries use the term (to represent a 1 with 12 zeros). Our billion is a milliard elsewhere.

Consider that the dollar sign is used in several countries, so add the country abbreviation: US$400, Can$400, AUD$400, NZ$400, and so on. And, the dollar sign signifies pesos or other currencies in at least 11 other countries, so be as specific as possible.