You’ve successfully scaled your company from neighborhood targets to global customers and boosted your reach into other borders for an extensive marketing goal. That’s awesome – anyone would love to do that.
But here comes the problem. In pursuit of cross-border or global dominance, you need to hire both local and foreign talents who will handle the intrinsics of your operation in respective sub-HQ locations.
So you end up with individuals with distinct language and cultural nuances. This linguistic difference leads to communication conflict within the team which can potentially disrupt your internal operations.
And that’s where multilingual tools come in.
In this article, we will discuss why multilingual tools are important and the best choices on the market for streamlining internal communications across multiple language barriers.
Benefits Of Multilingual Tools For Internal Communications
Multilingual tools for an internal communications team can be software capable of facilitating the translation or interpretation of speech or information into different languages suited to the user’s preferences.
In most cases, these tools are called translators or subtitles, but they can do more than just turn an English piece into French subtitles. For instance, multilingual tools like Boostlingo help businesses connect with human interpreters across miles and set them up for digital town hall meetings with no hitch.
Multilingual tools primarily aim to bridge language chasms between multilingual teams and here’s why that’s important for your business:
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Improved Employee Engagement Across Diverse Language Groups
Think about this. Your organization has several offices across different regions or countries. Oftentimes, you need to hold company-wide meetings, where all teams regardless of location have to tune in.
With everything at its best, you or anyone else anchoring the meetings might only be able to speak as much as two to three languages. But what happens if your combined team consists of tens of language groups?
What you get at the end is a disengaged team and a set of people who are unable to follow through with everything you’re saying or they have to use Google translate to make sense of your words.
In this case, using a multilingual tool helps you out. The best ones are designed to handle tens of languages with pin-hole interpretation accuracy while the worst can still handle as much as six languages. This ensures you connect properly with everyone and pass your message along in each person’s preferred language.
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Enhanced Understanding And Clarity Of Messages
Tom Golubovich, Head of Marketing & Media Relations at Ninja Transfers, says, “You can only call it communication when everyone receives and understands your message while giving feedback in a way you also understand. And how well people understand you depends on how clearly you pass the message.”
In the first place, clarity is not a luxury you can afford when you’re managing a multilingual team or organization without appropriate measures. Most people don’t even understand what you’re saying and they might have to use Google Translate to make sense of a few statements.
If you resort to English, since it’s the most widely spoken language and most non-native employees have a basic grasp of it, that’s still not going to fully help with clarity. A lot of non-natives are going to get thrown off when you start using more complex terms.
At such a crossroads, multilingual platforms like Boostlingo are game-changers. Not only do they help pass your message in different languages, but they also ensure total clarity which in turn ensures employees understand the key meeting details.
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Increased Inclusivity And Sense Of Belonging
Do you know how it feels when the CEO is addressing everyone, people nodding their heads in admittance of what’s being said, but there’s you who barely understands a single thing?
Or imagine receiving a document from the headquarters, all written in English – which sadly, is not your line of lingual expertise.
As Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, says, “Inclusivity does not have to do with providing diversity training and fostering respect for all cultures only. You also have to deal with the communication aspect by taking into account the language differences that make each individual unique.”
Multilingual tools, combined with workplace inclusivity training, help promote healthy communication within your company. No one feels like a third wheel when meetings are going on. And this boosts every employee’s self-confidence at the workplace.
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Streamlined Training And Onboarding Processes
“Hiring talents with diverse cultures means you have to deal with language differences. That’s especially crucial if you’re opening up a branch in other regions since your recruitment target for on-site workers is mainly the locals”, Ian Sells, CEO of Million Dollar Sellers, says.
New employees have to revert to HQ via video calls and existing ones have to undergo global training workshops occasionally. Both situations will be chaos if there’s nothing to bridge the communication barriers already present.
With a multilingual tool, you can easily connect with your non-native talents and seamlessly pull through the whole recruitment and onboarding process. Holding multilingual training for global teams also becomes effortless and less costly.
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Reduced Miscommunication And Errors
86% of employees believe ineffective communication and improper collaboration are the reasons for most workplace failures and human errors. That’s unsurprising since you can barely communicate your plans to others if there’s a language chasm.
According to Jerry Han, CMO at PrizeRebel, “Lack of good communication leads to disconnected teams. Your members have to spend most of their effort deciphering what you mean when they could have redirected that to executing the tasks. This results in operational non-productivity that can cost your organization a lot.”
There’s also the risk of your members getting the wrong message due to inaccurate translations, whether from colleagues or Google Translate. This increases the chances of executing tasks wrongly.
Integrating a multilingual platform into your operations prevents such scenarios and facilitates smooth internal communication within teams.
How To Choose The Right Multilingual Communication Tool
With the number of self-acclaimed multilingual communication tools on the market, it’s very easy to choose one that does more damage than good to your internal comms.
To avoid that, consider the following things:
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Assess Your Organizational Needs
Before choosing a tool, you should figure out how many teams you’re planning to bridge, the existing languages, present communication challenges, and future plans to expand into more regions.
For the first, there’s a limit to how many people some multilingual tools can cater to. Take Zoom as an example. Equipped with in-meeting translation features, it can only hold 500 people in a meeting at once, even with the most expensive subscription. That’s sufficient for small companies but not for an organization of tens of thousands.
Likewise, tools like Slack that aim to bridge language barriers only provide up to six languages. Depending on your present communication challenges and future plans, that might be enough or not.
Tim White, Founder of Milepro, also suggests, “Organizing employee surveys across all levels of your organization. Ask your employees what challenges they face due to language barriers and other limitations in communication. Know which languages they’d like to get support for. You can then use their feedback in selecting the best tool.”
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Evaluate Language Support And Translation Accuracy
Once you know your needs, find a tool that provides support for all the languages within your organization’s operations. For future reasons, the more language support, the better. This will help when you scale up and extend into other profitable regions.
You should also consider language translation accuracy. Of course, most multilingual tools now do that well due to the integration of artificial intelligence. But it’s best to go for one with almost 100% accuracy to avoid communication errors and ops failure.
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Consider Ease Of Use And Security
For a tool you’ll be using in-house, you definitely want it to have a smooth interface that’s easily navigable and usable. Check usability reviews on websites like Capterra and G2. Insights from other users will help you avoid spending on software that won’t meet your needs.
Most importantly, check for the ability to integrate with other tools including communication tools like Google Meet and scheduling apps such as Calendly. Or see if it has an in-built call feature – but not a definite necessity since you can use others.
“Other factors such as security are also worth considering. Remember the tool has to access your meetings, materials, and all, before it can translate. So, ensure you’re choosing a brand with much reputation and solid evidence of data security”, Phil Strazzulla, Founder of SelectSoftware Reviews, comments.
Data privacy too is a must. This prevents anyone from using your data to train their tool for more accuracy without your consent.
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Compare Pricing Plans And Scalability Options
Lastly, weigh the cost factor and compare it to your budget. Since most multilingual tools also feature other functionalities that can enhance communication, pricing might differ. So consider the functionalities you want when deciding.
Just ensure you’re not breaking the bank.
Sturgeon Christie, CEO of Second Skin Audio, advises, “Checking if your preferred tool can adapt to newer market needs and introduce more features for what it is worth over time. This could include adding entirely new integrations on request, providing custom APIs, allowing for custom remodeling as your company’s needs grow, etc.”
5 Multilingual Tools for Global Communications Teams
Multilingual tools essential for streamlining global internal communications if you choose right. Let’s explore five top choices you can use.
1. Boostlingo
Boostlingo offers a cutting-edge remote simultaneous interpretation (RSI) platform, Boostlingo Events, that combines both human interpreters and AI to provide real-time remote interpretation and translation. This dual provision makes it a winning tool for businesses struggling to connect with internal comms due to language gaps and cultural nuances.
One of the most important greenlights on Boostlingo Events is its individual language channels designed to make events and meetings fully localized at every touchpoint for participants. This includes speech, presentation decks, polls, and chat all in the language of the participants choice.
Boostlingo’s Strongpoints
- Host events that are multilingual at all touchpoints
- Customize events of any size
- Offer human or AI simultaneous interpretation
- Use AI-powered captioning and translation
- Translate chats, slides, and polls
- Bridge language gaps to provide accessibility for all event participants
- Integrate Boostlingo Events with any video conferencing platform
- Source interpreters in over 300 languages
Pricing
You need to request pricing. But note that cost varies based on your needs and duration of services. This ensures you only pay for what you need and use.
When You Should Use Boostlingo
If your internal communication is in chaos due to language barriers, regardless of your business size, then it’s time to use Boostlingo.
2. Zoom
Unlike Boostlingo, Zoom is primarily a virtual communication platform used for holding team meetings, webinars, training workshops, and other video-based remote gatherings. As one of the pioneers of video meetings, this tool provides multilingual features such as AI speech translation, captions, or real-time subtitles for ongoing calls.
Zoom’s Strongpoints
- Meeting recording features with AI transcription.
- Has a Whiteboard and screen-sharing functionality thus making it a go-to for educational gatherings.
- Provides a free plan that allows as many as 100 participants for 40 minutes per meeting.
- Zoom can integrate with other platforms like Boostlingo, Calendly, and Salesforce.
Pricing
Has a basic plan with limited functionalities. The pro plan costs $12.49 per month and the business plan costs $18.32 per month. You need to request pricing for Business Plus and Enterprise subscriptions.
Takeaway
Zoom is a full-fledged video-meeting tool with max 1000 participants per meeting at the highest subscription and can easily integrate with translation services like Boostlingo. This makes it a perfect choice for small and medium-sized businesses looking for scalable multilingual meeting software.
3. Slack
Slack is mainly a text-based collaboration platform that stands out due to its library of corporate-level functionalities such as Enterprise key management, slack channels for teams, slack connect for external partners, and a workflow builder.
While it’s not as extensive as Zoom or Boostlingo when it comes to multilingualism, Slack still provides support for around seven languages – English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.
For more language support, you need to download the language translation bot via Slack’s app library.
Slack’s Strongoints
- Has over 2200 integrations to streamline communication.
- Simple-to-use interface and a vast trove of usability resources.
- Provides automation functionalities including a Slack AI.
- Acts as a workflow builder for cross-teams.
Pricing
Offer a 90-day free plan. The pro plan starts at $7.25 per month and the Business plan starts at $12.25 per month. You need to request pricing for Enterprise-grade.
Takeaway
Slack has limited multilingual functions but compensates for this through its translation bots. If you’re facing communication challenges on other textual communication channels, then this tool is a good alternative.
4. Transifex
Transifex is an AI-powered translation platform that provides context-based translation of team documents including textual files and voice recordings.
In contrast to other multilingual tools listed above, Transifex is not a real-time translator, but it can help you reproduce your recorded meetings, calls, and other files in different languages with AI or third-party human translators. This makes it a good choice for analyzing post-meeting resources in your preferred words.
Transifex’ Strongpoints
- Translates over 100 languages.
- Connects you with third-party human translators and native professional speakers.
- Provides human-level translation with an extremely high accuracy.
- For translation of voice and video files, you can configure the final output’s voice the way you want.
- Integration with platforms like Slack and Zapier.
- Online editor and support for machine translation.
Pricing
No free plan. The starter plan starts at $120 per month and Growth is $570 per month. You need to request pricing for the Enterprise plan.
Takeaway
Transifex is a good choice for translating outside-meeting documents such as slides, business resources, guides, and post-call recordings into preferred languages for your employees.
Kito Crosby: Real-Life Application Of Multilingual Tools
Kito Crosby is a hardware lifting organization born from the merger of Japan’s Kito Corporation and Crosby Group based in North America. While this merger was the dream of many, it also resulted in significant communication challenges.
First off, the organization grew to more than 4000 employees speaking over 14 languages in one night. Secondly, Kito’s overall workforce became multinational with individuals from Asia, Europe, and the US.
This led to internal communication failures as a result of the language and cultural barriers.
“Sometimes, our CEO would do a Teams call or WebEx in English. We also held in-person town halls where leaders would hit as many of the sites as possible. Despite some speaking multiple languages, no one could speak every language. We often hired local translators to accompany them, but team members missed information because the presentation and material were not in their native language. We also experimented with live subtitles in Microsoft Teams for internal communications, and encountered reading difficulties and some technical difficulties.”, says Melissa Ruths, Chief Marketing Officer, Kito Crosby.
To solve this, Kito Crosby had to employ a multilingual platform that could provide real-time translations for remote, hybrid, and on-site meetings while reproducing work resources in as many languages as possible for all team members.
And that’s how Boostlingo came in.
With a quick turnaround, Kito was able to build a strong internal comms strategy for a global workforce and reach each employee across different locations in the languages they prefer. Employees could also record meetings and rewatch with all the available language features.
Overall, Kito Crosby has been able to seamlessly engage its employees and reduce the incidence of errors that result from miscommunication.
Conclusion
Effective communication is the basic key to unlocking maximum productivity at workplaces and reducing human errors. With so much on the line, it is therefore important to invest in multilingual tools that can help streamline your communications and break the lingual barriers if you’re managing a multilingual team.
Before choosing a suitable multilingual tool, first evaluate your organization’s needs including how many languages you hope to cover and other communication needs. Then consider the language support and accuracy of your preferred tools while weighing their costs and your budget. Lastly, assess for security and data privacy.
On a good note, you don’t have to go through so much process or leave your internal comms in chaos when Boostlingo can take care of it in a finger snap.
Speak with a member of the Boostlingo team today to learn more.
