Charities and NGOs are often the last line of defence for people in need. Sadly, receiving support it is proving increasingly difficult for such organisations. Economic strains together with a growing list of crises and the harsh realities of donor fatigue are just some of the challenges modern charities face.
Raising awareness of causes is a crucial strategy for charities and NGOs. Awareness is the first stage of charitable donations but it also helps organisations provide a wider variety of support to people in need.
In this article, we explain how charity and NGO translation helps organisations raise awareness around the world.
How charities educate by raising awareness
People can’t donate to causes they don’t know exist. Raising awareness about causes is one of the most important roles of charities and NGOs. The news may report on natural disasters in foreign lands and social issues at home, but charitable organisations can go much further.
Charities and NGOs can educate audiences about important issues, including those unreported or underreported in the news. They can provide a greater depth of information than in any news report, fund research campaigns and create emotive messages that move people to take action.
Of course, some of this messaging is designed to generate funds through donations, events, raffles and other means. However, funding isn’t the only goal for organisations raising awareness about charitable causes.
For example, a children’s charity may provide information for family members to help them deal with certain issues by themselves. It could be something as simple as spotting potential signs of depression or bullying at school in order to prevent more serious problems from developing.
The role of NGO translation in raising awareness
Charities and NGOs putting their message across to multiple language audiences need a specialist set of translation services.
This could include any of the following (and more):
- Official language translation: Legally valid translations performed by qualified translators and certified by another qualified language expert.
- Official document translation: A subset of legal translation performed by certified language professionals who translate official documents for legal processes – e.g. visa applications for NGO workers.
- Website translation: Translating and optimising multilingual charity websites for each language audience.
- Content localisation: Adapting content for each target audience where replicating the original message in each language doesn’t work.
- Social media translation for global awareness: Translating content for social media and managing multilingual accounts for each language audience.
- Transcreation: Translating creative content, such as adverts and marketing material – especially for branding and campaigns driving donations or other contributions.
- Technical translation: Any content of a technical nature – such as technology or medical research – requires specialist technical translation.
- Medical translation: Any organisation dealing with health issues is likely to need specialist medical translation services.
- Video translation: As video plays an ever-bigger part in campaigns, organisations increasingly need video translation services.
As you can see, charity translation isn’t a standalone language service. It is instead a combination of multiple, highly-specialised language services. The correct mix varies from one organisation to the next, depending on their specific field and how they communicate with their audiences.
Getting the right message to the right audience
Many charities and NGOs need to get different messages out to certain audiences. A good example of this would be any organisation dealing with issues related to climate change – or anything exacerbated by it.
Let’s say we’re talking about an organisation that raises funds for natural disaster responses. We have plenty of data showing climate change exacerbates many natural disasters. We also know different parts of the world are affected disproportionately by climate change and the natural disasters in question.
As a result, charities and NGOs may need to target different language audiences by adapting their messages. Audiences in less-affected parts of the world may not understand the severity of crises and require more educational content than others.
They might also require more convincing marketing messages to motivate action.
In these cases, direct translation of a single message will fail to get the desired response from each target audience. Therefore, a more comprehensive language service is needed to produce messaging that gets the desired impact from everyone.
Again, this can involve a variety of language services, including translation, localisation, transcreation and others.
To make sure the right mix of translation services is used, NGOs and charities need to approach and speak with language agencies that specialise in their area and field of expertise.
Need to raise global awareness of your causes?
If your organisation needs support with raising global awareness of your causes, our language and translation experts can help. We have previously supported organisations such as the United Nations and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), helping them translate content for different purposes.
Please contact us with your request (including RFP and RFI requests), by filling out the form on our contact page and one of our team members will get back to you.