Advice on language

[clarky92]

Looking for some helpful PH advice please.

I'm a UK full time employee (PAYE) part of a team. The team has been informed a percentage (unknown) of our daily work will now be in a different language (nothing to do with Brexit). Nobody in the team, myself included, speaks or writes the language.

We have been informed there will be no training or assistance to help us, just to use publicly available tools such as Google translate. This only affects writing/ reading and we will not be expected to speak the language on the phone for example.

Our current targets are still valid and there is no provision for extra time to allow for translation for example. This will 100% be a problem and targets will not be hit anymore.

I'm not trying to be difficult and will do this if necessary, but this doesn't sound great to me, can a UK employer make this change?

Edit - To add I get the feeling this is a line manager decision and has not been processed through senior management/ HR. No letters or phonecalls from anyone other than my line manager about this change.

Edited by clarky92 on Tuesday 5th January 16:41

Edited by clarky92 on Tuesday 5th January 16:42

[matrignano]

What language is it?

[mw88]

Non ne sono troppo sicuro dal punto di vista legale, ma ci vogliono 5 secondi per incollare qualcosa in Google Traduttore.

Sono abbastanza sicuro che probabilmente c'è un programma gratuito che potresti ottenere in grado di tradurre con un solo clic in Windows









Sorry

[fat80b]

I think it depends what the context is as well as the language.

A few emails needing to be translated from French is not such a big deal.

contract negotiations in japanese, somewhat harder......

[clarky92]

fat80b said:

I think it depends what the context is as well as the language.

A few emails needing to be translated from French is not such a big deal.

contract negotiations in japanese, somewhat harder......

Troubleshooting software which nothing can be copied outside of due to security, copy and paste doesn’t work. Manually typing everything into google translate is the solution being floated. Language is french

[clarky92]

My concern isn’t the actual mechanics of it, I’m happy to work that way and even learn a new language.

My concern is no provision has been made for the time this will take, I still have the same timed targets and work load. Is this just the way the world works and have to accept it?

[MRichards99]

Could some form of optical character recognition software (used in apps that turn photographs recipts into PDFs that contain actual writing, rather than just the photo) be used as an alternative to copy and paste?

[clarky92]

MRichards99 said:

Could some form of optical character recognition software (used in apps that turn photographs recipts into PDFs that contain actual writing, rather than just the photo) be used as an alternative to copy and paste?

Good suggestion and something very similar was mentioned in a meeting. Issue is the company aren’t willing to install anything to help us and I don’t have permissions/ there are policies against me installing or running software on my own.

[shouldbworking]

Surely this is just a simple "and how exactly do you think that is going to work?" discussion to show what a stupid idea it is? Perhaps take an old example technical support query and get a friendly person who speaks the language in question to repeat that request in that language, and see how much extra time / effort / bad customer experience that is?

[TCX]

Maybe you should be difficult,at least in so much as getting the details clarified including copying in snr management,hr?
Sounds very poorly thought out,without a lead in or test can't see how it can't cause major issues?

Edited by TCX on Tuesday 5th January 20:53

[bigandclever]

Google translate can use your phone’s camera to translate on the fly.

Eg

Edited by bigandclever on Tuesday 5th January 21:12

[Starfighter]

clarky92 said:

Troubleshooting software which nothing can be copied outside of due to security, copy and paste doesn’t work. Manually typing everything into google translate is the solution being floated. Language is french

Even retyping may be an issue depending on what you mean by “security”. Note that Google translate uses the text entry to improve the algorithms in use.

I use Google translate and it does get confused with technical terminology in German and Italian as well as French. The translations are understandable (ish) but am not happy using them in official communication as it comes out all Officer Crabtree.

[BritishBlitz87]

I hope someone warns management before they press ahead with this bold new scheme!

It should give your foreign colleagues a good few belly laughs in these troubled times.

That's about the only positive I can think of.

[underwhelmist]

I'm no expert, but this sounds like a fairly significant change in the terms and conditions of your employment and I thought there were rules about the types of changes allowed, and how these changes can be made? I realise you might not be in a strong position on this though.

[clarky92]

Thanks for the replies. I offered to run a demo for my manager to show how this isn’t going to work in the real world, but he wasn’t interested and we were told to muddle through it.

Great suggestion with the translate app and using the camera, seems to work very well.

[anonymous-user]

Having lived outside the UK for 40 years, my advice would be don't stress, if you are getting a technical business query, you will e amazed how words repeat, all you need is a passive understanding, if you have to answer in the language and need an active vocabulary, the that's completely diffrent.

[CubanPete]

I was about to suggest Google lens too.

How many foreign calls do you expect to have? Can you ignore them, or are they issued to individuals? Are the quality of your solutions tracked? How big is the team?

If only you have a problem with this, it is your problem, if the team has a problem with it, then it is your boss's problem...

[Mogsin]

The management might want to check the licensing terms of Google translate and it’s security aspects. The last time I looked there were questions over who owns and information which is translated. Additionally once information is typed/scanned into translate you have lost control of security and data export. Might be different now though.

[smashing]

clarky92 said:

fat80b said:

I think it depends what the context is as well as the language.

A few emails needing to be translated from French is not such a big deal.

contract negotiations in japanese, somewhat harder......

Troubleshooting software which nothing can be copied outside of due to security, copy and paste doesn’t work. Manually typing everything into google translate is the solution being floated. Language is french

That's fking bonkers...why...why does anyone think this is a good idea

[rxe]

Can’t see a problem converting troubleshooting guides into French using Google. After all, what’s the worst that can happen when “don’t press the red button” gets turned into “When does the next rhino leave for Mombasa?”