How Do We Make the Case for Language?

The majority of my experience has been with the Department of Defense. Unfortunately many times the department chooses to pursue the quick win versus the long term answer. Knowledge of language is an essential piece in understanding other people and countries. I have always argued the point that simply learning culture without the time spent to learn a language is insufficient. The problem is that learning a language is by necessity a more long range goal than spending a few hours or days trying to understand the basics of a different culture. With all the other "requirements" members of the military face it is often problematic to find the time to invest in language training. When the time has been available the results have been impressive, but once again it is a matter of what the priorities are for the units and the services. My fear is that as we continue to have a smaller footprint in foreign areas, the perceived need for language learning will continue to diminish. That would be a truly unfortunate result.

Lori - This is a subject I am deeply fascinated by for a variety of reasons. My experience is that in the localization world the ROI is significantly more tangible than in health care. I believe the CSA study specifically speaks to that. Most clients intuitively understand the value in localizing a 'product' for a market. The challenge occurs when discussing pre- and post-sale content that affect the customer experience. I believe the recent acquisition of LanguageLine by Telepresence, a leading customer experience group, goes a long way toward the legitimacy of ensuring the omnichannel customer experience is in-language, but none of this specifically addresses your concern. I believe we need to develop metrics around key 'moments of truth' around the pre-sale experience or buyer's journey as well as the post- sale experience and document the impact language services has at each point. If we loosely defined the buyer journey as awareness, consideration, and decision and the post sales experience as implementation, support, and loyalty, we would want then want to look at each stage and define what type of content is critical to conversion and develop metrics around. In the budget driven world of Health Care we had to demonstrate the cost savings associated with efficiency and quality of care. i.e. wait times, misdiagnosis, repeat visits, medical malpractice, etc. I sincerely believe that we will only begin to develop these metrics once we, as an industry, finance them. It feels as if we would be hard pressed to have our clients pay for a study that re-enforces the use of our services. That being said I could see where an internal department at a client who might choose to do A/B testing to justify the value of what they do. Just my very humble opinion. Thank you for all that you do Lori Thicke. Douglas Green

Thanks Lori for again calling attention to this issue. Yes language matters, and also languages matter. And development communication always involves a choice in the matter of language(s). Unfortunately, as H. Ekkehard Wolff, Dr.phil. et habil. and others have pointed out, the connection between language and development is often ignored, although that between language and education is better appreciated (see abrief <a href="https://donosborn.org/blog/?p=230">blog discussion</a> for more). It seems that language is in some ways like the air that surrounds us - essential but not really considered unless there is a problem. And even then the issues involved and how to deal with them are not well understood. There is a need for more applied linguists in fields such as development and health, and for more research such as that of TWB about which you write. That could help better inform policy and practice in long term development programs as well as in emergency responses like for the Ebola epidemic (in which TWB was of course prominent in translation work). It is good that Simon Andriesen will be presenting in Guinea. Hopefully he will have the chance while there to connect (if he hasn't already) with various activists on Guinean national languages, such as Tafsir Baldé and Fodé Sanikayi Kouyaté who are organizing with a local NGO called ABLOGUI, a colloquium entitled "R?le des NTIC dans la promotion des langues Guinéennes" in late November.

Very interesting post. Thanks!

Thanks for raising this issue again Lori. It's so important. More can be done at the research level by an independent organisation such as CSA. Too often clients only value good translation when it goes wrong. I also think LSPs need to take more responsibility for this too by asking our best, most loyal customers to think about what translation actually does for them. Without it they wouldn't be doing international business...or at least a lot less of it! I should think they would appreciate questions along these lines rather than "were you happy". If a customer doesn't want to share this info, fair enough, but we won't get anything if we don't ask. ROI might be tough to get, but positive statements with real benefits from buyers would certainly be a step in the right direction.