Danke Euro 2024, hosting a multi-lingual event
Euro 2024 may have ended a few weeks ago, but football fans are still reflecting on their team’s strategy and performance. Regardless of which team you supported throughout Euro 2024, whether it was your home country or the one you drew in the office sweepstake, the tournament provided plenty of nervous and celebratory moments.
As a translation and interpreting business, we’re always fascinated by the language side of large-scale sporting events such as these, as fans travelled from far and wide to support their teams and take in the atmosphere at stadiums across Germany. It’s a huge undertaking to host a European wide event that brings together people who speak a range of different languages.
With that in mind, we take a look at what language solutions need to be considered when hosting events inviting people from various countries who speak a range of different languages.
Advertising and communication ahead of the event
You’ll need to consider whether you want to run a number of different adverts in native languages, to segment your marketing and run campaigns such as Facebook advertising in different countries to attract visitors.
A localisation service would be ideal for this, as a trained and experienced linguist will review your advertising text to check it’s culturally appropriate for each country you’re targeting, making any suggested amends to ensure the message stays relevant.
Consider whether you need to include an option that will allow visitors to your website to view it in a different language. The official UEFA Euro 2024 website let users change the language between English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese – helping to make the event feel more inclusive. With football supporters needing to purchase tickets to attend matches, the ability to change the website to different languages was crucial to provide a better user experience and ensure fans could easily buy the right tickets.
A quick search of the internet and you’ll find tools that you can add to your website to automatically change text to another language, but it’s important to remember it is often machine-generated translation, so it’s always advisable to ask a translator to provide a human check of the different language versions to avoid any errors.
If you’re working with a marketing agency to help organise your event, ask them to work with a trusted language solutions provider. They can create set text in different languages, that can then be used across a range of marketing campaign material.
Navigating the event
When it comes to welcoming visitors remember to think about what communication they’ll interact with and consider whether further language support is needed.
Signage around the venue for example, might need to be installed in different languages – especially if you’ll have areas that about accessible to the public. Amenities such as toilets, lifts, stairs and food and drink provisions would also benefit from being clearly signposted to make the space easy to navigate.
Essential safety information will also need to be translated – so everyone knows what to do if there is a fire, or if they have a medical emergency.
If you’re providing a printed programme for the event, that you’ll hand out to people so they can see the floorplan and event schedule, then it’s important to translate this too. If it’s a large event, consider printing different language versions, so each visitor gets a programme in their own language. For smaller events it may be more practical to incorporate different languages into one brochure.
Interpreting during your event
If you’re inviting people to sit and listen to guest speakers at your event, or are organising a panel discussion, then consider providing an interpreter and headphones for people to use. The interpreter can directly translate the conversation so people can follow along if guests are not speaking in their native language.
If you’re recording these sessions to share online with people who couldn’t make the event, then subtitles or voice over translation would provide a great opportunity to be more inclusive.
Partner with a trusted language provider
However big or small your translation needs are, it’s important to work with a reputable language solutions provider so you can be sure that your event is delivered to the highest standard.
Here at NRL we’re long-standing members of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) and all our linguists have extensive experience providing translation and interpreting services to businesses.
Want to find out more about how we can support your organisation?