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INTEGRATED TRAINING PROGRAMS LOCALIZATION
If you or your company have a training program in English, and want to implement it in Brazil, I can offer you the complete solution, having 20+ years’ experience with the most varied programs.
When it’s about training programs, merely having them translated won't always be effective: overall, there are many cultural aspects that may jeopardize training outcomes. The major concern, sometimes overlooked, is to minimize rejection by trainees.
Some companies start out doing so under the assumption that “we are an American (or British, or Canadian, etc.) company, so the course is compatible with our organizational culture". An innocent mistake. The local operation is (or should be) integrated to the local culture, therefore some care must be taken. The worst response that may be expected was well stated by a participant in a translated – however not localized – course: “All this is very good, but it wouldn’t work here. If you ever relocate me to world headquarters, I’ll most certainly use it. However for the time being I’ll go on doing it the way I know it works here.”
The solution is to redevelop a training program embodying all content and technology from its original, however adapting it to the local environment. As a training program may contain quite varied materials, especially in terms of multimedia resources, it's common to have its translation work scattered among a large number of unrelated vendors. This renders the reunification work very difficult, if not utterly impossible at a reasonable cost.
So, what’s your alternative?
My proposal is to undertake the localization of the whole training program, centralizing translation. As I have done it for a few hundred training programs involving varied media, I wouldn’t have any problem in translating while making all the necessary cultural adaptation under one single set of guidelines. As a training consultant, I can readily empathize with the trainer who will lead/facilitate such courses, to redevelop a program with the same content, however with a local flavor.
Regarding the production of the various materials, whatever I cannot economically do myself, I have means to outsource directly, or provide guidance to my client to outsource (or do) it on their own, whichever is most cost-effective.
There are other areas where I can contribute to cost reduction, which stem from my experience in developing training programs. As technology advances every time faster, it’s common having to localize programs using “obsolete” media. In such case, for instance, I would have no problem in converting a training program using VHS video tapes + presentations in PowerPoint or alikes (even overhead slides) into an interactive DVD.
Another issue is the economy of scale. Many training programs are produced considering a large worldwide audience in English. Experience has shown that, albeit many Brazilian trainees can communicate in English, for many of them training carried out in English tends to lose efficiency considerably. Furthermore, training given by Brazilians for Brazilians in English is not seen as a sensible decision. In view of my experience in localizing such programs, I am able to suggest changes that will make one same program feasible in a smaller scale.
If you need to localize a management, technical, or any other training program for Brazil, please feel welcome to contact me by clicking on the E-mail button at left.