| Important international negotiations are underway. Both sides have brought their translators. The translator conveys the words of each participant to the opponent’s language and, in turn, ensures the accuracy of the translation being done by their colleague on the other side of the negotiation table.
On whose side should a translator be? Naturally, on the side of the employer. However, how does this affect their work? It doesn’t. They translate as neutrally as possible. They simply translate, ensuring that both parties understand each other. Can a translator have their own opinion about the employer’s goals and values? Yes, but again, they should keep that opinion to themselves and continue translating not in a way that they think “would be better,” but in the way that is required. It would be wrong for a translator to assume that their employer wants to instigate a nuclear conflict and start “helping” them by coloring the employer’s or the opponent’s speech and adding their own commentary. If we view the work of a customer service specialist as that of a person who understands the customer, speaks their language, translates that into the internal language of the company and its procedures, and provides a solution, it becomes clear that any discussions about which “side” such a specialist should be on are irrelevant. How often have you interacted with customer support and felt like you were talking to a gatekeeper? This happens because support thinks they are doing a good job for their employer by “saving” money, for example, by denying you warranty service. How often does it occur to support to communicate with the customer using the company’s documentation language, sometimes just quoting phrases from rules or contracts, rather than genuinely trying to understand what the customer is saying in their own words? How often does part of the support team simply not grasp the essence of the request and, without thinking, file it away as a “standard complaint,” just because they can’t hear what is being said and aren’t acting as “translators,” but rather as “teachers of internal language”? It doesn’t matter who pays the support team. What matters is whether the support team can understand the client’s language. If you have a support team, make them repeat the client’s question verbatim and ask the client if they understood it correctly. Often, very often, this helps. |