The Benefits of Translation for Educational Organizations
There are more than 137,000 schools and higher education organizations across America. On top of this, online learning and courses are becoming increasingly popular with Americans of all ages.
Online courses allow more people than ever to access your educational resources. However, being online isn’t the only thing you need to consider to make your educational organization accessible.
More than 67 million people in America speak a language other than English at home. This can create discord between their home and learning environments. Fortunately, translation services are here to help.
If you run an educational platform or organization, read on to find out more about translation services and why they are important.
Professional translators offer a range of services to businesses and organizations in order to make their resources accessible. This includes:
- Document translation (for example of books or brochures)
- Website translation
- Audio and video transcription
- Live phone interpretation
- On-site and in-person interpretation
All translations will be based on the resources and information that you provide. So it should reflect the educational programs and voice of your organization.
This ensures that you can communicate effectively with anyone using your educational platform. It also means that they will be able to use any resources that you produce. A quality translation service will offer these services in a range of different languages.
So why are language translation services important for educational organizations? Let’s take a look.
When it comes to learning, presenting your clients with a series of facts isn’t always enough. For students to really understand what they are learning they need to be able to read around the subject and ask questions.
However, to communicate effectively people need to be able to use their strongest language. This can be a challenge if a lot of your teachers don’t speak multiple languages. In fact, it’d be impossible to hire teachers that cover all of the languages your students might speak.
Document translation ensures that all of your resources are available in the languages that your students need. And in-person or phone interpretation can help your staff answer direct questions.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlines that no educational institution in America should discriminate on the basis of:
- Race
- Religion
- Sex
- Color
- National origin
Because of this, each organization has a responsibility to make its resources accessible to any student who wants to learn from them. This includes offering translation support for students who speak English as a second language.
A student trying to learn in their second language will have to work much harder than someone learning in their first language. This can make things like writing fluently very difficult. So subjects, such as creative or speech writing, can become extremely challenging.
Using translation services puts everyone who wants to learn on a level playing field. So they can focus on developing their skills rather than getting lost in translation.
To support your students’ learning, you need to create cohesion between their learning and home environments. Otherwise, students can struggle to transition between them, even if they are learning online or remotely.
Because of this, your organization needs to be able to communicate effectively with your students’ support systems. This might be their parents and carers, or even employers and colleagues depending on the age of your students.
Being able to communicate with these people in their first language will help to improve these relationships. This helps to include your students’ carers in their education so that they feel supported 24/7.
When it comes to teaching one of the greatest challenges you face is time. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and some students have a limit on their attention span. So anything you can do to keep your lessons or courses running smoothly is essential.
Having resources translated in advance can save you a lot of time when communicating with multilingual students. This ensures that they understand what they are working on throughout a course. So you don’t lose time trying to translate things on the spot.
If any serious translation issues arise then on-demand and over-the-phone interpretation can help to resolve these quickly. So your staff has more time to focus on their teaching and you can focus on developing your educational programs.
If you want to support your students’ learning with translation services then finding a translator that delivers quality services is essential. In that case, there are a couple of things that you should keep in mind when looking for a translation service.
It is a good idea to look for:
- A translator that offers a range of different services
- Someone who covers all of the languages you need
- A translator who has experience working in the educational sector
- A company with great testimonials from previous clients
- A translator who can turn around their workload quickly
- A company that offers great customer service support
This will ensure that you find a translation company that can deliver quality and will work with you to find exactly what you need.
As you can see, translation services are vital to any educational organizations that are committed to delivering quality to all of their students. This ensures that you are able to enrich and support the learning of anyone who comes to you.
So what are you waiting for? Get in touch today to find out more about the translation services that DTS can offer. We’re here to help.
