Are You Preparing for a High-Stakes International Presentation?

Don’t Let Your Message Be Lost in Translation

Delivering an engaging and impactful presentation is a tall order even when your listeners understand your language and belong to the same culture as you do. This task becomes way more challenging if you are speaking to a multilingual and multicultural audience. These 5 tips will help you to communicate with confidence and impact.

Imagine: you put a lot of thought and effort into preparing a presentation for an international meeting. You’ve refined your key message, carefully selected content, designed compelling slides, and (in an ideal world) even rehearsed your speech out loud in front of the camera.

However, your presentation did not go the way you expected:

When you told a joke, several people laughed heartily right after you delivered the punchline, a part of the audience chuckled a few seconds later (which is an eternity in the compressed realm of a breakout session), but the majority of listeners were silent and looked perplexed.

During a Q&A session, one attendee asked a question about the concept that was clearly outlined on one of your slides.

Another participant completely misconstrued your main point.

You asked an audience member a simple follow-up question that required a yes-or-no answer, and in response, she gave a mini-lecture on an unrelated topic.

And afterwards, you overheard someone saying that you presented like "a typical American, with overabundant enthusiasm: a lot of woohoos but little substance."

What went wrong? Did the interpreters completely screw it up?

In almost two decades of facilitating cross-cultural communication as a conference interpreter, I have seen it all… the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yes, you might have encountered an incompetent interpreter. (Selecting the right professional for your event is a topic for another time.)

More often, however, presenters don’t realize that interaction with multilingual audience, especially when intermediaries (i.e. interpreters) are involved, changes the flow and the dynamics of communication. To navigate these treacherous international waters successfully, speakers need to modify their content and delivery.

Here are a few useful tips:

1.     Express your ideas clearly

Interpreters don’t just swap English for foreign-language words. They relay the meaning, the intent, and the emotion of your speech. They work with units of meaning rather than with individual words. Strive to express your ideas in a clear and precise way.

 2.     Be mindful of U.S.-specific content

If the information is solely relevant to the United States, provide some context and explanation.

 3.     Making a multicultural audience laugh is an art

Use humor carefully, especially if it is based on wordplay. Make sure that your jokes are universally appealing.

 4.     Factor in the mechanics of interpretation

Your speech will be interpreted either in consecutive or in simultaneous mode.

If consecutive mode is used, you’ll have to stop to allow the linguist to interpret your message in the foreign language. This will double the time needed for your presentation.

Before you start, come to an agreement with the interpreter about the length of each chunk of information you will present. Aim for chunks of five sentences or less.

If your presentation is interpreted simultaneously, there is no need to interrupt your delivery; the interpreter will be relaying your presentation as you are speaking. However, paying attention to the rate (fast or slow) and the rhythm (intonation and pauses) of your speech is important.

Simultaneous interpreting is not exactly simultaneous; the interpreter is several units of meaning behind the speaker. Prior to rendering the message, interpreters need to hear at least a few meaningful segments. This is what produces interpreting lag-time. Your non-English-speaking participants might laugh at your joke a few seconds after the English speakers did. While preparing your speech, plan for this delayed reaction.

 5.     Remember: interpreters are eager to help you

Give your presentation to the interpreters beforehand. The better they know your speech, the better they will interpret it for your audience.

These considerations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to preparing for a multinational event.

And like with every skill, public speaking included, mastery comes with training and practice.

If you are preparing for a high-stakes international presentation, you might want to schedule a coaching session with an experienced conference interpreter.

As one of my clients, an automotive executive, commented, “Reading the recommendations is one thing. Incorporating specific strategies into my performance is a totally different ball game.

Prior to the training session, I hadn’t had any idea how complex this process is and how important it is to get it right. It was like learning how to dance a verbal tango with the interpreter: awkward in the beginning but smooth and easy in the end. As a result, my keynote address truly resonated with our international workforce.”

My coaching session will help you to identify and avoid potential pitfalls typical for cross-language and cross-cultural communication. This two-hour workshop can be conducted remotely or on-site, one-on-one or with a small group. 

Let me help you be your brilliant self in the language you don’t speak!