Tomedes Supports Field Readiness for an International NGO's Latin America Training Program

The Client

• Company name: Horizonte Relief Network (pseudonym) 

• What does the company do? An international NGO focused on food security and community resilience programming, with field operations across Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and an expanding presence in Latin America. 

• Deadline: 16 business days 

• What do they need? Horizonte required Spanish-language versions of a complete field staff training curriculum – covering community needs assessment protocols, beneficiary data collection procedures, safeguarding policies, and a facilitator guide for in-person training sessions. The materials would be used to onboard new field coordinators and community liaison officers across program sites in Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru. All three country teams would receive the same translated materials, meaning the Spanish had to be accessible and operationally accurate across three distinct regional contexts.

The Challenges

Translating training materials for an international NGO is not the same as translating a corporate manual. The stakes are different. Field staff working in humanitarian contexts rely on training documents to make decisions that affect vulnerable communities – beneficiary identification, data handling, incident reporting, safeguarding response. Imprecise language does not just create confusion; it creates operational risk. Horizonte faced three challenges that required more than a standard translation workflow.

1. First, cross-regional Spanish that works in Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru simultaneously

Latin American Spanish is not a single register. Vocabulary, formality conventions, and even the terms used for standard humanitarian concepts vary meaningfully between Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru – and within each country, between urban program offices and rural field sites where community liaison officers would actually be using these materials. A term that is standard NGO field vocabulary in Bogotá may be unfamiliar or carry different connotations in a rural Guatemalan context. Horizonte could not maintain three separate Spanish translations, so the materials needed to be written in a pan-regional Latin American Spanish that was formally neutral, operationally clear, and free of country-specific idioms or register markers that would feel foreign to staff in any of the three locations.

2. Second, safeguarding and protection terminology requiring precise, consistent rendering

Horizonte's training curriculum included a full safeguarding policy module covering definitions of abuse, exploitation, and harassment; reporting obligations; and the rights of beneficiaries and staff. In humanitarian safeguarding contexts, terminology is not interchangeable – the distinction between "abuse," "exploitation," and "misconduct," for instance, has specific meaning in international protection frameworks, and mistranslating or softening any of these terms in the Spanish version could undermine the policy's enforceability and the organization's duty of care obligations. The translation team needed linguists who understood the PSEA (Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse) framework and its established Spanish-language terminology, not translators working from general dictionaries.

3. Lastly, facilitator guide adaptation for low-literacy training contexts

A portion of Horizonte's field staff and community liaison officers operate in areas with limited formal education, and the facilitator guide was designed to support trainers working with participants who may have low literacy levels. The English source materials used plain language principles (short sentences, concrete examples, minimal jargon) but these principles do not transfer automatically into translation. Spanish sentence structure tends toward greater complexity than English, and a direct translation of a plain-language English sentence can produce a grammatically correct but harder-to-process Spanish equivalent. The translation had to preserve the deliberate simplicity of the source materials, which required active editing judgment, not just linguistic accuracy.

Why Tomedes?

Horizonte selected Tomedes based on its experience with NGO and humanitarian sector translation and its ability to assemble a linguist team with relevant thematic backgrounds. The safeguarding module in particular required a translator with direct familiarity with international protection frameworks and their established Spanish-language terminology, a specialization that Tomedes was able to source from its network of subject-matter expert linguists.

The project was assigned a dedicated project manager who had previously coordinated multilateral NGO translation programs, and who structured the workflow to include a country-specific review stage after the main translation pass.

The Solution

1. First, a pan-regional glossary developed with Horizonte's program team

Before translation began, Tomedes worked with Horizonte's Latin America program coordinator to build a 52-term glossary covering the project's core vocabulary: humanitarian and development sector terms, safeguarding definitions aligned with PSEA framework language, beneficiary data collection terminology, and the specific program names and role titles used across Horizonte's three country offices. Each glossary entry was reviewed and approved by Horizonte before translation started, ensuring that the linguistic team was not making independent judgment calls on terms that carried organizational or legal weight. The glossary was applied consistently across all modules using the Key Terms Glossary tool, eliminating the terminology drift that commonly occurs across long multi-module translation projects.

2. Second, a lead translator with humanitarian sector specialization

The main translation pass was handled by a linguist with a background in international development and humanitarian program documentation, and specific familiarity with PSEA framework Spanish-language conventions. The safeguarding module was treated as a discrete workstream within the project – translated, reviewed against the PSEA standard terminology reference, and signed off by the lead translator before being integrated with the rest of the curriculum. This separation ensured that the most high-stakes content in the package received dedicated attention rather than being processed as part of a continuous document flow.

3. Lastly, a three-country review pass for regional accessibility

Following the main translation, Tomedes conducted a regional review in which native-speaker reviewers based in Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru each read through the materials and flagged any terms, phrases, or constructions that would read as regionally marked, unfamiliar, or inappropriate for field use in their context. The review produced 31 recommended adjustments (primarily vocabulary substitutions and register calibrations) which were reconciled by the lead translator into a final version that retained pan-regional neutrality while incorporating the local accessibility feedback. Horizonte's Latin America program coordinator reviewed and approved the final text before delivery.

Conclusion

Field staff cannot apply training they do not fully understand. When Horizonte's new coordinators and community liaison officers in Colombia, Guatemala, and Peru opened their training materials, every module (from community needs assessment to safeguarding incident reporting) was in Spanish that was written for them, not translated for a generic audience. The curriculum was deployed across all three country programs on schedule, with no training facilitation issues reported in the post-deployment review.

Are you preparing training materials, policy documents, or program resources for Spanish-speaking communities or field teams? Contact Tomedes today for a free consultation.

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