Mapping Best Multilingual Business Practices in the EU

Multilingualbusinesspracticesvaryfromonecompanytoanother.Needsandpracticesarenotcentralised.Multilingualbusinesspracticesarenotfixed.Thepeople involved are not dedicated to multilingualism in the company; rather they are incharge of one function in the company which has links with multilingual issues. Althoughthere are no official multilingual strategies in companies, they ‘act multilingual’ in theirmanagement choices to integrate cultural and linguistic diversity into their businessdevelopment.Best practices are linked to shared experiences, collaborative uses, common references,corporateprocessesandsmartdevicesinordertohelppeopleread,understand,writeandcommunicatebothinsideandoutsidethecompany.Bestpracticescanbeencounteredatdifferentlevelsinacompany(strategiclevel,operationallevel)andfordifferentfunctions(General Management, Human Resources, Communication, Marketing and Sales,Information and Document Management, and Internet websites and applications). Often,the people who take charge of multilingual issues in a company hold positions in thefollowingDepartments:- GeneralManagement- HumanResources- Communication- Information/Documentation- MarketingandSales.Not all departments will be able to present an exhaustive view of all possible businesspractices related to multilingualism, but they should aim to give a general outline of thetools which support employees dealing with multilingual information in a multilingualenvironment.AsfortheresultsofthecasestudiesandtheoverviewofmultilingualisminEurope,themainconclusionsare:- Thelinksbetweenmultilingualismandbestpracticesmaynotbethatobvious.- Multilingualism is spread throughout the company. It is not managed by onededicateddepartmentbutispresentatalllevels.- The use of several languages in European companies should be a strength.However,Englishisstillthemainlanguageusedandunderstoodinthebusinessarea.- IT tools are used for specific needs only: translation, localisation, crosslingualsearching,dictionarytools,etc.- TheoutsourcingoflanguageservicesisagoodsolutionforbothSMEsandglobalcompanies which cannot provide ondemand language skills (mainly formultilingualwebsitesandcommunication).InmostEuropeancompanies,multilingualbusinesspracticesaregearedtowards‘speakingglobally’.Forthestaff,masteringEnglishimpliesmakingthemselvesunderstoodratherthanexpressingthemselvesinperfectEnglish.Moreover,thechoiceoflanguagesin‘collaborativemode’isgenerallyamixtureoflanguageswhichwilldependonthespecificcollaboratorsinvolved.English,German,SpanishandFrencharethemainlanguagesusedduringmeetingsor interviews, as they are the linguae francae within many panEuropean and globalcompanies.40