Lost in Translation – Tips For Ensuring Your Audience Understands Your Message

[ By Stephanie Leibowitz]

When we travel to another country and do not know the local language or have only rudimentary foreign language skills, we expect that some of what we say may not be understood by the other party (the native speaker). We are prepared for potential misunderstandings and may even see these exchanges as a source of humorous anecdotes with which to amuse our friends, families, and colleagues upon our return to familiar ground (literally and figuratively).

However, it’s no laughing matter if your prospects/clients, colleagues and employees, strategic partners, or other important stakeholders and constituencies don’t fully understand or misunderstand what you want and need them to know. This is particularly critical in today’s multicultural work environments and global marketplace. A dictionary will give a word’s definition (and a Thesaurus will give you synonyms), but your ability to communicate successfully also depends on the nuances to word usage that can mean the difference between getting your point understood and creating a communication blunder with tangible negative consequences. We sometimes mistakenly assume that two parties who ‘speak the same language’ – that is both parties are native speakers of the same language, such as English – receive the same message when they hear/read the same word(s). Experience shows that if you ask your management team, staff, and clients to define familiar terms such as leadership, value, planning, strategic, communication, and performance, you will get responses that vary greatly, not in the literal sense, but in the interpretive sense. Context and perspective act as translation filters and these filters determine whether our intention has been communicated in addition to any facts.

Here are a few tips to ensure that your intended messages are received:

• Understand your audience’s perspective on the topic. This helps you identify what part of what you want to communicate will be perceived as most important / of interest, the level of detail you will be expected to provide, and what you want the recipient to do with the information (read and file for future reference vs. take specific action).

• Understand the cultures of your external audience’s organizations. This gives you clues about preferred communication styles as well as how they speak about their organizations. You want to mirror that.

• Know your audience’s preferred vehicle for receiving communication as well as what you have determined to be the most effective one (defined as more people understand your message, less or no need for repeat communication and clarifications).

• Clearly communicate what you mean when you use a specific term or phrase. For example, when you tell others that the goal is “effective communication” or “sound financial performance”, it is up to you to define what behaviors demonstrate this, quantitative and/or qualitative examples of what these look and sound like.

• Speak/write using simple words. Avoid jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms. The same acronyms/abbreviations can mean very different things to different groups. I’m sure you’ve conducted an internet search on an acronym only to find many results that are not the one you expected.

Remember to start by asking “Why is it important that I communicate this particular content to this specific audience?” When you communicate with purpose and clarity, your audience won’t need a translator.