Accurate and consistent health and safety translations are absolutely vital in maintaining high occupational health standards across all your locations.
For international organisations, the employer’s duty of care for staff health and safety doesn’t stop at a geographical border, and nor does your need to provide current and clear translated health and safety advice, material and training.
Even within a single country, in today’s multilingual society, staff in each of your locations will have different native languages and varying understanding of English. Diligent organisations provide translated health and safety materials in multiple languages too.
Unclear or incorrect safety translations don’t reduce risk – they can actually increase them. With legal compliance risks involved, this is not an area where machine translation is reliable or advisable.
When assessing how to do health and safety translation you need a partner who understands the landscape of health and safety management, risk management and risk communication, to help you achieve and then maintain compliance.
This page will explore how AST Language Services can help you achieve just that, thanks to our specialist service offer. Download it now to discover more.
Health and safety translation services
AST Language offers expert health and safety translation services for all types of health and safety instructions and documents used in workplace risk communication and risk management including:
- Health and safety manuals
- Health and safety policies
- Health and safety alerts (from the UK HSE and equivalent international authorities)
- Safety process descriptions or Method statements
- Safety Data sheets
- Equipment User manuals and Technical manuals
- Safety assessments – COSHH, HACCP and other standards
- Health and safety training materials, instructor-led courses and e-learning courses
- Labelling of hazardous substances
- Fire safety and other emergency instructions
- Warning and directional signage
We speak all the languages of health and safety
Whether working from English into any of the world’s commercial languages or back again, AST linguists are used to translating health and safety documents regularly. They know how to ensure not just that your translated health and safety manuals are accurate in language, but that the meaning is clear and unmistakeable.
We maintain client glossaries of translated health and safety terms that are validated by experts, to ensure that their use in all your organisation’s materials remain consistent over time. We do this in all our professional translation services, so that multilingual terms relating to any customer’s brand, product, service or their internal lexicon are used correctly, every single time.
Alongside this, we use translation memory software to speed up the health and safety translation process, by retaining and identifying sentences and blocks of previously translated health and safety text and sections. The glossaries and memorised sentences are connected and can be used in perfect synch. Customers who work with us over time gain increasing efficiency and speed of delivery benefits.
Where health and safety translations matter
Organisations can’t afford translation errors that lead to misunderstanding of health and safety instructions – whatever the sector, type, or shape. In any site or working environment – including those which are now working in hybrid ways – miscommunication of vital health and safety information is a danger both to staff, and to their employer.
We can support translation of health and safety documents and occupational health translations around numerous requirements, such as:
- Equipment use (e.g., heavy equipment handling)
- Site safety (e.g., signage, safe routes, safe behaviour expectations)
- Safety equipment (e.g., lifting gear, personal protective equipment)
- Materials handling (e.g., use, storage, and risks of hazardous materials and chemicals)
- Facilities management (e.g., use, storage, and risks of cleaning chemicals)
- Offsite safety (e.g., driving for work, working on customer premises, and home working)
When translating health and safety information is key
Employee safety in your organisation depends on effective health and safety communication in every language, every day – but there are points where particular risks can arise. Ensuring you have your health and safety documents translated properly helps enable effectiveness in:
- Risk communication planning
- Occupational health management
- Manager health and safety management guidance, and policy compliance
- New employee onboarding and training
- Site or office visitor safety management
- Internal H&S communications
- Safety and risk awareness campaigns & talks
- Management of health and safety employee relations cases
AST Language has a vast experience of different types of translation challenge and is happy to support translation of any of these types of communication – which all form part of your health and safety culture.