An imagined bridge built from speech-shaped tiles connects two hills, symbolising the shared work of making opportunity accessible across languages.
A translated invitation is a beginning. People also need a way to ask questions, understand the choices and take the next step in a language they can use.
By Arbab Naseebullah Kasi, Chief Executive Officer - CEO, Feel Worldwide Foundation Inc.
Imagine this scene. A woman who makes beautiful clothes finds an announcement for a free business workshop. She knows how to measure a sleeve, rescue damaged fabric and tell a customer why one material will last longer than another. What she wants to learn is how to turn those skills into a more dependable livelihood.
The announcement appears in a language she reads comfortably. She follows the link.
The registration page is in another language. There is a box asking about her business structure, but she is unsure what the available answers mean. A telephone number is listed. She cannot tell whether someone answering it will understand her question.
She closes the page for now.
This is an illustrative situation, not the account of a particular participant. Yet it gives us a useful way to examine our own invitations. At what point could someone understand that an opportunity exists but still be unable to use it?
We may never see that moment in an attendance report. We see the people who registered, the people who arrived and the people who completed the programme. The person who stopped at an unfamiliar question can disappear from the story entirely.
I want us to pay attention to that missing part of the journey. An organisation can have something valuable to offer and still place an avoidable language barrier between the offer and the people it hopes to reach.
Recognise the knowledge already present
A person searching for a word may have years of knowledge about the subject under discussion. Someone who pauses before answering may be translating the question, weighing an unfamiliar expression or deciding whether it is safe to admit confusion.
In our imagined workshop, the clothing maker's practical experience does not become less valuable because she needs help understanding a registration form. The organiser's responsibility is to find out what support would allow her to participate, rather than treating the difficulty as a verdict on her readiness.
This principle matters in education too. UNESCO's 2025 publication, Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education, places learning in languages learners understand at the centre of its approach. It offers policy principles, implementation actions and case studies for education systems. It is guidance for designing education, not evidence that translating a single worksheet will produce a particular improvement. Read UNESCO's multilingual education guidance.
Learning another language can be a worthwhile goal. Access to today's lesson, meeting or service still deserves attention while that learning continues.
For a teacher, that might mean checking whether a learner's difficulty concerns the concept or the language used to explain it. For a community organisation, it might mean asking whether a prospective participant understands the available choices. The response should fit the actual obstacle.
Follow the invitation all the way through
Start with one service and trace what a person needs to do from beginning to end.
They might read an announcement, check eligibility, register, receive a confirmation, find the venue, attend a session and ask a follow-up question. Each stage can introduce a different language demand. Translating the announcement while leaving everything after it unchanged can create an invitation that promises more access than the service delivers.
New York City offers a concrete example of a broader approach. The Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs explains that Local Law 30 requires covered city agencies to appoint a language access coordinator, maintain an implementation plan, provide telephone interpretation in at least 100 languages, translate commonly distributed documents into ten designated citywide languages and display information about free interpretation. These are requirements for the covered agencies, not a universal legal checklist for every organisation. Read the city's explanation of its language access framework.
For a small nonprofit, the useful lesson is the attention to responsibility, everyday documents, live communication and public awareness. The exact arrangement will depend on its services, resources and applicable obligations.
Return to the workshop. A stronger journey could include a reviewed registration form, a clear explanation of the questions and an identified route for language help. The confirmation should tell the participant what support is actually available during the session.
If an organisation cannot yet provide a particular service in a requested language, it should explain the limitation clearly and investigate suitable options. Advertising unlimited support and improvising later places the uncertainty on the person who came for help.
Ask which language works for this task
Language needs are more specific than a nationality label.
Someone may prefer one language for conversation and another for reading. A person may handle everyday English comfortably but want an interpreter for a complicated discussion. Another may read a language fluently while finding an audio message difficult to follow.
Ask respectfully. Which language would help you discuss this? Would you prefer written information, a telephone conversation or another available format? Do you need any other communication support?
Keep the questions relevant to the service. A language preference does not require an account of someone's migration history. Collect only the information needed to arrange support, explain its purpose and handle it appropriately.
Do not assume that one community representative can describe everybody's needs. Speak with people who use the service and, where possible, people who have found it difficult to access. Invite community organisations to advise on the languages, formats and channels that would be useful, while recognising the time that consultation requires.
There may be a practical reason an existing translation is going unused. People might not know it exists. The wording might be unfamiliar. The document might be available only in a format that is difficult to read on a phone. Finding the reason is more useful than counting another completed translation.
Make the work understandable before translating it
Look carefully at the original message. Does it explain who the opportunity is for, what it costs, what someone must do and what happens next?
A vague instruction remains difficult after translation. An unexplained acronym requires explanation in every language. A sentence full of internal terminology asks the reader to learn the organisation's habits before getting to the information they need.
For the business workshop, replace an unfamiliar phrase with a clear explanation where possible. If a technical term is necessary, explain it without changing its meaning. Distinguish a required step from an optional one. State whether a form is an expression of interest or a confirmed booking.
Give translators the context: who will read the material, what they need to do and where the text will appear. A short button label may need a different treatment from a paragraph in a guide. Leave room in the design for wording that takes more space.
Keep essential information together. A reader should not have to cross between languages to discover a fee, a deadline or an eligibility condition.
These are editorial choices an organisation can begin making before it purchases new software or redesigns an entire website.
Give technology a review step that matches the stakes
Machine translation can produce a draft quickly. The difficult question is whether that draft is suitable for the decision a reader needs to make.
Canada's Translation Bureau advises users to consider the consequences of AI translation errors and to use professional translation or professional review to reduce the risks. Its guidance also warns against putting confidential information into online AI translation tools. This is practical advice from a government translation service, not a claim that every tool makes the same errors. Read the Translation Bureau's guidance on AI translation.
For an organisation, a reasonable starting point is to identify what would happen if a translation were wrong. An error in a casual description and an error in a safety instruction do not carry the same consequences. Content affecting health, legal rights, eligibility or financial commitments deserves appropriately qualified review and the safeguards required in that setting.
Review the finished material where people will encounter it. Check the date, numbers, links, names and instructions. A correct paragraph cannot help if the button beside it sends the reader to the wrong place.
Community feedback is useful for checking whether wording feels natural and understandable. It should complement professional review where specialist accuracy is needed, rather than making a community member responsible for judgments outside their expertise.
Avoid copying private case details into a convenient online tool simply because translation is needed. Choose an approved process that protects the information involved.
Budget for the people who make understanding possible
Language support requires time before, during and after a conversation.
A bilingual colleague may be able to help with ordinary communication, but fluency alone does not establish that they are prepared for every interpreting or translation task. Consider the subject, the person's competence, confidentiality, workload and the responsibilities they are being asked to carry.
Do not build a service around the assumption that a participant's child or an available relative will manage consequential conversations. Arrange suitable assistance and check the rules that apply to the service. People should be able to discuss their own circumstances without being forced to disclose them through an unsuitable intermediary.
For a planned event, allow time for interpretation instead of compressing the same agenda into the same speaking time. Share relevant materials with the language professional in advance, through an appropriate secure process. Explain unfamiliar organisational terms and identify who can answer questions about the content.
Recognise this work in the budget. If an organisation expects translation, interpretation and community review to happen continually, it needs a sustainable arrangement for them. Quietly adding those duties to one helpful person's existing workload is a fragile plan.
Provide a way to answer back
Language access becomes more meaningful when someone can ask a question, disagree or explain that the available options do not fit.
A translated leaflet is useful. So is knowing how to raise a concern after reading it. A multilingual announcement can attract people to an event. The event also needs a workable way for them to participate.
There are existing services that illustrate this connection between language and opportunity. NYC311 describes the city's Business Solutions Centers as providing free support for entrepreneurs and says their business courses are accessible in multiple languages, including Spanish, Chinese and Russian. Course topics include planning, finance, marketing and technology. This is an example of a service offer, not evidence that every participant subsequently built a successful business. Readers interested in a particular course should check its current language arrangements before registering. Explore the official description of NYC Business Solutions services.
For our imagined clothing maker, useful support would mean being able to understand the lesson and ask the question that matters to her business. Perhaps she wants to know how to price a repair that takes longer than expected. Perhaps she wants to distinguish revenue from money she can safely spend.
The opportunity becomes more valuable when her question can shape the conversation.
Check whether the next step is genuinely possible
An organisation can begin with a modest test. Choose one important journey and invite a small, appropriately supported group to try it. Recognise their time. Ask them to find the relevant information, explain what they believe it means and show what they would do next.
Observe where the process becomes unclear. Do people understand the conditions? Can they request help? Does the confirmation match what they thought they were agreeing to? Can they recover from a mistake without starting again?
Record the difficulties and fix them. Keep translated versions aligned when the original changes. Give someone responsibility for reviewing the process, including the route for questions and complaints.
When reporting progress, go beyond the number of languages added to a website. Explain which part of the service became usable, what people still found difficult and what remains to be improved. A small test can reveal problems, but it does not prove that every language group or every participant will have the same experience.
The clothing maker at the beginning of this story does not need us to invent ambition for her. She already has skills and a reason to learn. She needs a fair chance to understand the offer, decide whether it is right for her and ask for what she needs.
The next time we say an opportunity is open to everyone, let us follow that claim beyond the first announcement.
Can people find their way through it in a language they can use? And when they speak, have we made room to understand the answer?
