AMES recently took part in a forum discussing how to design impactful communication campaigns for non-English speaking audiences.
AMES Australia International and Community Development Manager Dr Melika Yassin Sheikh-Eldin told the Lexigo forum that effectively targeting these audiences is not only a great commercial opportunity, it's also vital when delivering essential information to people who speak little or no English.
Melika said the biggest mistake organisations make when targeting people from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB), is not understanding the audience well enough.
“Cross-cultural communication is about more than just using a different language. You need to understand a bit about their traditions and culture and make sure your campaign is appropriate and will resonate with the target audience," she said.
Melika cited a Cancer Council of Victoria campaign where they collaborated with AMES to engage their target community.
“We held community information sessions where Cancer Council experts were on-hand to answer questions with the help of interpreters and community members with English language skills.
“We trained interested community members to be contact points for their compatriots – building their capacity to help their community on an on-going basis. This gave the community role models and ensured the approach was culturally and linguistically appropriate.
“The more you engage with NESB communities, the more the benefits and understanding will grow", Melika said.
“Going directly to them, consulting them, will lead to better results. They will tell you how to communicate in a way that's relevant, instead of delivering ineffective campaigns," she said.
Melika said some tips when communicating with CALD audiences included:
- Consider your message within the cultural context of your target audience. With Coronavirus restrictions, for example, some communities interpreted the restrictions of 20 people at a gathering to mean 20 people at a time. It was not clear that having 20 people in a room at once, but 60 visitors throughout the day, for celebrations such as a wedding, would breach the restrictions.
- Go beyond translation. A creative campaign that was developed for mainstream audiences won't necessarily resonate with your CALD audience – make sure it's culturally sensitive and appropriate.
- Check you're using the right dialect of your target audiences' language. For example, Arabic speakers might use the Lebanese Egyptian dialect, which wouldn't be understood by Sudanese Arabic speakers. This applies to written and spoken resources.
- Don't assume the language is what defines the audience. You need to gain insights into their culture and assumptions.
- Consider whether literal (word-for-word) translations are appropriate for your campaign, or you need to use localisation to translate for meaning, to make sure it makes sense.