Should software training be in the language staff speak?

One language rule rarely fits. A storekeeper may speak Turkish at home, read English part numbers all day and still freeze at an English error message that reports a locked record.

List the tasks first. Receiving goods, raising a dispatch note, closing a job card and marking attendance each need their own answer, because spoken, written and read language often differ inside one task.

Where the words are already English, such as part codes, units and status names, teach them exactly as they appear on the screen. Where the instruction is a full sentence, say it in the floor language, in the wording staff would use when asking a neighbour for help rather than textbook wording.

Run hands on sessions in the language people use to argue about work, with a real goods receipt on the screen and the supplier’s paper bill beside it. Questions come out faster. The trainer hears the real objection, such as a rounding rule or a missing supplier code, instead of a polite nod from the back row.

A printed card at the workstation does more than a slide deck, especially one card per task with a screenshot, numbered steps and the exact button names. Laminate it. Tape it to the monitor. Replace it when the screen changes.

Write the cards with a local speaker who does the task daily, because machine translation turns a status name into a different word from the one a supervisor uses. Then nobody finds the button.

Some systems let you rename a field, a menu or a status, and others offer a language pack for the whole interface. Check what yours allows before you promise anything to staff, because a promise you cannot keep costs more trust than silence.

Rename carefully, because if the screen says Dispatch Pending in one place and Dispatch Waiting in another, reports and training both break. Keep one agreed list of terms and apply it everywhere, from the data entry form to the printed delivery note and the card taped to the monitor. Review the list with two supervisors first.

Keep the original label in brackets on each card, so that when the vendor’s support team sends an English screenshot the floor can still match it.

Managers often prefer English for reports and settings, but a shared room slows both groups, because the manager skips ahead and the operator loses the thread. Split them.

Hold a second session on filters, approvals and exports, and let managers ask their questions in the language they think in. Use the report names they will meet in the system, such as the stock ageing report and the pending approvals list.

Pair a bilingual supervisor with each shift. That person answers questions in the moment and passes the notes back to the trainer, who fixes the cards before the next shift starts.

Pick one shift and train it in the floor language with cards, then train a second shift in English only, using the same slides and the same practice records.

Compare the questions asked in week one with the wrong entries found at the end of week two, using the same count sheet for both shifts. Keep the comparison honest. Same trainer, same task, same checklist.

Count correction requests rather than opinions, and write down every wrong entry with the field it landed in, whether quantity, supplier code or date. Then decide for the whole plant. Copy the method of whichever group made fewer wrong entries, and write the result, with the counts behind it, into the training plan before the next go-live.