Lost In Translation: Safety Training Gone Wrong

Ag Safety Training Gone Wrong

In our intro memo to our Lost in Translation series, we teased a few things - painfully obvious mistakes, understandable hiccups and some disasters that result from trying to be too clever by half. 

In our first installment of the series, we’ve got the story of an ag safety training gone wrong, in a way that falls into the first category: painfully obvious (at least to us, and frankly, in a way that should be to anyone who agrees to take your money in exchange for simultaneous interpreting services). 

Some time ago, a regional agriculture trade organization set up a large safety training for its members and their teams, providing a day-long training program focused on the prevention of pesticide exposure incidents. Demonstrations were to be held in English and Spanish (naturally, a large percentage of the workforce is Spanish speaking). The topics of the day were field worker safety, equipment calibration and maintenance, laws, regulations and more. 

With over 300 attendees, and a multilingual program, the organizers, in addition to contracting the training and safety experts, brought in a local interpreting agency to provide simultaneous interpretation and the necessary equipment.

Unfortunately, the Spanish part of the program was a major flop. 

Issue number 1:

Only one interpreter showed up to the job. Any event with simultaneous interpreting lasting over 30 minutes requires two interpreters per language pair. Trust us - the temptation to save a buck by only using one interpreter in these situations is not worth the headache. If you don't trust us, read on, and maybe you will. 

Two person interpreter teams, working in shifts to combat cognitive fatigue, also support each other during the course of events - the team member not interpreting is not taking a nap or checking their Instagram - they are actively participating, feeding figures or other numbers referenced by the speaker to their partner for accuracy, note taking and following the event in preparation for their next shift, doing word look ups in the on the fly, checking the accuracy of their partner’s terminology, the list goes on. 

To send one interpreter for a full day of this type of work is a recipe for disaster. The interpreter will fail to perform adequately after a short period of time, guaranteed, no matter how good they are.

In this case, the solo interpreter struggled from an accuracy standpoint and was forced to take long breaks throughout, rendering large portions of the program inaccessible to all Spanish speakers present (although as you’re about to see, this was moot due to another major blunder). 

Issue number 2:

There weren’t enough listening devices provided for the Spanish speaking audience. Remember when we said that the botched interpreting making big chunks of the program inaccessible was moot? Yeah - even if they had properly staffed the event with two interpreters, they only showed up with 30 headsets and receivers for the 175+ Spanish speaking farm workers who made up at least 60% of the audience. 

Unfortunately, this type of occurrence is not uncommon - there are a lot of “interpreting providers” who will make these mistakes - usually well intentioned folks who just don’t specialize in these simultaneous interpreting and events – only doing them once in a blue moon, or on the side.

This failure to properly staff the event with the right number of interpreters or the requisite equipment led to conflict between the interpreter and the organizers, and all parties left the event upset and unsatisfied. Attendees described the interpreter to us as abrasive and standoffish - our best guess is the interpreter was overwhelmed, fatigued and cognizant of the fact that a) they had been set up for failure, and b) knew they had done a sub-par job.

So for your next event, please be sure your language company staffs at least two interpreters in each language, and always have them throw in a few extra headsets and receivers, on top of what ever else you think you’ll need. You never know, you may get a few extra folks who want interpretation, or run into a technical issue with a device (like a dead battery).

Or, you could just call us, and we'll take care of that stuff and then some, because, yes, more could go wrong, which is why this is just the first of many Lost In Translation memos. 

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