New campaign launched – UK only
We launched a new campaign on Saturday for the UK only, and in English only, in support of cleaners employed by London Transport. A very similar campaign, in support of London bus drivers, ended in victory last week and we’ll be closing this down tomorrow.
I’ve also tweaked the software so that on a UK-only campaign, the default country is now “United Kingdom”. I’ll make similar changes next time we have a Canada-only campaign or something similar.
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This get’s confusing. As we weren’t advised not to translate, it’s been done anyway. So should we now translate the email which wasn’t UK only?
The procedure for translations of campaigns and mass mailings should be as follows:
I have a short list of translators who are informed every time there is a campaign to be translated or a mailing.
If a translator notices a new campaign in English but they have not yet heard from me, they should wait, as sometimes the campaigns are not intended to go global.
In this particular case, several translators jumped the gun and in one case, sent out a mass mailing even before the English mailing went out. (I have no idea what the content of that mailing was.)
I have consulted with the union here to see if the campaign would last more than another couple of days — because for a short, sharp campaign we don’t have the time to get all the languages working. The union has now given me a green light and I will be writing to all translators.
In that mailing, I will also try to clarify these issues for the future. Of course we keep adding on new translators, and need to ensure that all of them, even the new ones, understand how this works.
As we tend to do these things when we have time and sometimes “jump the gun” because we do now and not later, would it not be possible to advise before the campaign goes live rather than after? Anticipating “going live” might also allow us to translate faster and who knows, get online in several languages simultaneously.