Writing for a global audience
When targeting an audience as large as the globe, writing becomes exponentially more difficult. Hidden meanings, symbolism, and abbreviations all are easy to get lost in translation. To avoid offending other cultures, losing the overarching ideas in your text, or unintentionally including non-relevant contextual information, you must follow a few writing guidelines.
Here are three rules to keep in mind when writing for a global audience.
1. Watch your grammar
All those lessons you learned in your high school English class will pay off when you write for a global audience. This type of writing requires you to follow essential grammar rules.
To strengthen your writing, here are a few examples of writing rules that you shouldn’t ignore:
- Use active voice as much as possible. Passive voice omits subjects, which can make your document confusing, if not impossible, to translate. When you write in passive voice, you make the message ambiguous. Stick to active voice to shorten up your sentences and keep your content on point.
- Keep it positive. Negative sentence construction is clumsy and lengthy. The more words you use, the more expensive it is to translate. Stick to positive sentence construction and you’ll have a clearer, less expensive translation.
- Only capitalize when necessary. Capitalizing letters for emphasis is confusing when writing for a global audience. If you need to capitalize words to justify an acronym, bold the first letter of each word to make it obvious to your translator why the words were capitalized.
- Keep abbreviations and acronyms to a minimum. If you need to include an abbreviation or acronym, always add an explanation the first time it is used.
2. Stick to global standards
When writing for various cultures and audiences, leave the colorful language out and stick to global standards. Here are a few examples of what this entails.
- Don’t include idioms and metaphors. These are confusing. Most of the time, translators cannot translate them correctly. Finding a similar idiom in another language is often impossible.
- Limit symbols. Symbols in English, such as “&” used to replace the word “and” do not translate. If you need to include a symbol, such as for a unit of measurement, write out the title of the symbol and place it in parentheses to avoid confusion. For example, British Pound (£).
- Be aware of meanings of colors and numbers. Colors and numbers are loaded with meaning in various cultures. What might symbolize peace and hope in English could symbolize death and destruction in another language.
- Don’t make political references. Politics vary greatly from country to country. Leave them out of your documents that are intended for people around the globe.
3. Take your graphics into consideration.
Take the images you include or reference in your content into consideration along with your translation. These often carry non-verbal cues that could get lost in translation. The following are a few types of illustrations to use with caution.
- Screenshots. The data in the screenshot will not get translated. Consider not only what the text in the screenshot might say, but also what the colors, numbers and more might represent. This includes culture-specific items, such as dates and currency.
- Icons. Icons vary from country to country. For example, law enforcement images, piggy banks, and other visual cues are not easy to translate. In some cases, they might offend certain demographics in other countries.
- Tables. The text you include in tables is subject to expand. Languages, such as German or Spanish, often use more characters to convey the same concept.
Reaching a global audience is an imperative part of any international business. When writing for other countries, keep your grammar intact and your writing concise. Avoid using too many symbols in your text or illustrations. By following these tips, you’re sure to have a strong outcome in your translation project.
Image: PhotoSpin
