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As you may have already known, Précon also has a branch in Belgium. And specifically in Hasselt, in the province of Limburg. From beautiful Hasselt, our Flemish colleagues are committed to food safety, quality and legislation in the Belgian food market.
Among other things, our colleagues use e-learning modules from our public offering for this purpose. Super convenient of course that all the material is already there for them! You would think... Nothing could be further from the truth, because the Flemish language and the Belgian food market have important differences with the Dutch! Until now we didn't realize it, but in the meantime we are learning more and more from our colleagues about the sometimes brief and sometimes enormous differences between our two neighboring countries.
"A typical Dutch expression we encounter in the chapters on allergens is "he is not getting well". We rather say "he doesn't feel well" or "he gets sick." Furthermore, at the end of each training there is a "final test". In Belgium we use the term "test" rather with primary and secondary school students (6 - 18 years old), that's why we prefer to say "test" in our trainings, that way they come across as more professional in Belgium.
There has also been some confusion because of the following Dutch words: grapefruit and patat, which in Flemish are called grapefruit and fries. In addition, by kroketten we do not mean meat croquettes but potato croquettes.
Another example is the word "lifting," in Belgium we say lifting. In one of our shorter trainings "Don't Vertil je niet!" there is no less than 34 times the word "lift" in it, under the form of: lifting, vertillen and lifting position. So we have called this training "Ergonomics and Safe Working" because "Don't Lift!" sounds a little strange. In addition, several trainings talk about ARBO, but ARBO is not a common term in Belgium. We rather talk about ergonomics and ergonomically correct/safe working."
This means that our Belgian colleagues are regularly "vervlaaming" our e-learning modules. In other words, they go through the modules and replace all the words and phrases that are not common in Belgium. Also, of course, the NVWA has to be replaced by its Belgian counterpart, the FAVV, the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain.
Does your company need help translating an online training course? Then be sure to contact us at info@precongroup.com, Want to learn more about our customization options first? Check it out here.
Subscribe to our newsletter, our monthly look at food and non-food quality management.