The
Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) — the voice of the global
business travel industry — took the first step in a global
translation project, with the production of French translations of
three key GBTA resources to support French speaking members in
France, Canada and Africa globally.
Speaking
at the GBTA Canada Conference in Toronto today Paul Tilstone, senior
vice president of global operations for GBTA and Kevin Maguire, GBTA
board interim president announced to a packed room where more than
400 delegates gathered from across Canada, that the association has
started a long term translation programme to bring key GBTA resources
to major markets where there are sufficient travel professionals with
local language needs. The programme will initially seek to translate
the most used GBTA resources into French, Spanish and Russian and is
being supported by sponsors in each of the regions.
At
the conference, GBTA announced its first set of translated documents
to help support the growth of GBTA across a growing Francophone
network globally as it starts to expand further into France and
Africa over the next few years. The first set of French translated
resources includes:
-
Travel Risk Management 2.0
- A
Guide to a Strategic Meetings Management RFI and RFP
-
Key Performance Indicators for Managing Corporate Travel
Talking
about the translated resources, Paul Tilstone said, “Translating
many of our major resources into local languages is a long-term
undertaking for GBTA as it requires an assessment of which resources
are most required in a country, what the size of the audience is and
it takes time and money to revise these resources. But GBTA has
expanded into regions around the world where travel managers are
crying out for such support in their local languages and the board’s
commitment has always been to deliver global content locally.”
The
association added that it was aware of a growing opportunity to
provide translated documents for Latin America and that its recent
launch into Russia had already shown a need for that region too.
Tilstone added, “These are just the first set of regions we have
identified because demand has been so high but in the fullness of
time we are likely to see a significant need across the languages of
Asia too.”
