How to Write for an International Audience
Introduction
Writing for an international audience is a task that many technical and business writers face every day.
You’d better have a firm grip on the contemporary American slang if you are a screenwriter drafting the sequel to “Easy Rider.”
But if you are a technical or business writer, get into the habit of writing without any local cultural references. Otherwise you will only end up baffling your global business partners.
Personal Anecdote
That’s actually how I felt when I received an e-mail from India a few months ago that ended up with this friendly reminder:
“Please do not hesitate to revert to me if you have any further questions.”
“Revert to me” is apparently a phrase used regularly in India.
Then I discovered that I sometimes also use a similar non-standard (by U.S. standards) language in my own daily communications by using purely American phrases or conventions.
Not an Easy Task
Writing for an international audience is a difficult task. We have to keep in mind that culture, language, and the way we communicate are different in different countries. It is not always easy to write a piece of content that will resonate with a global audience, but there are some tips on how to do it.
The first thing we should do before writing for an international audience is researching the target market. Find out what kind of content they usually consume and what kind of topics they are interested in. Once we know this information, it will be easier to create content that will be relevant and interesting for them.
Another tip is to use local voices in our content, which means finding people from the target country who have interesting insights on the topic or can share their personal experiences with it. This way, we can make sure that we are engaging a broad audience and reaching audiences that might not be aware of the benefits of our product.
8 Simple Steps When Writing for an International Audience
1. Speak the language of your audience, whenever possible.
2. Make use of culturally-relevant humor, if any. Using humor is always a risky decision since the sense of humor varies widely from one culture to another. Don’t be surprised if what you think is a good joke is read on the other side of the globe as an irrelevant, enigmatic remark, or worse.
3. Use international symbols, expressions, and gestures.
4. Incorporate local holidays or traditions into your content if it’s appropriate to do so.
6. Create a strategy for adapting content across different countries in different languages based on culture and economic class rather than just translating the text word-for-word in many languages with exclamation points or parentheticals with explanations after each sentence in parentheses.
7. Focus on how your product or service can help people locally rather than globally unless you have a specific export goal that already has certain geographic restrictions or needs.
Things to Watch For When Writing for an International Audience
Here is a shortlist of the things you may want to watch for:
1) Never address your foreign business partner by her or his first name. Stick with the last names, just to be on the safe side.
2) It’s a good idea to always start your letters with a warm personal greeting and a “small talk” opening line. Most foreigners do not enjoy a letter that plunges right away into the business at hand.
Example:
“Dear Dr. Khoulafanga,
We can offer you much better prices for the electron microscopes you’ve inquired about…”
BETTER:
“Dear Dr. Khoulafanga,
Thanks for writing to us, inquiring about the electron microscopes you are currently using at your Nairobi facility. We appreciate your kind interest.
Our initial research suggests that we should be able to offer you much better prices for the same specs… ”
3) Stay away from idioms since most cannot be translated in a meaningful way.
Example: “Our developers are burning the midnight oil here to meet the deadline.”
BETTER: “Our developers are working 60 hours a week to meet the deadline.”
4) Avoid jargon since that also does not translate easily from one culture to another.
Example: “Our board has decided to deep six this project.”
BETTER: “Our board has decided to cancel this project.”
5) Watch your dates. There are not a lot people in the world who write month first, followed by day and year. Most Europeans and Middle Easterners, for example, write the day first, followed by month and the year. So if you write 3/5/2007, there is no easy way to decipher whether you mean March 5th or May 3rd?
Be on the safe side and write your day first followed by the month spelled out in writing. Then place a comma, and follow it with the year.
For example: “3 January, 2007” or “15 October, 2006”.
This convention totally eliminates any (potentially costly) misunderstanding across the cultural barriers.
Conclusion
The world is becoming a global village and we are all interconnected. With the progress of globalization, the world has become a small place where people from different cultures and backgrounds can interact with each other.
In this age of globalization, it is important for businesses to be able to reach out to international audiences. They need to be able to communicate with them in a way they can understand easily, without any errors or inadvertent misunderstandings, so that they can connect and build bonds with them.
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