How to text employees who speak Spanish

Ask, don’t assume

Add a question to onboarding: which language do you prefer for work texts? Plenty of bilingual employees prefer English; some who speak English well still prefer Spanish for anything detailed. Asking avoids both guessing wrong and singling anyone out.

Two groups beat one bilingual message

A single message in both languages doubles its length. Texts are short by nature — and in Airhorn a broadcast body is capped at 150 characters so it stays at a predictable cost — so a bilingual message usually means cutting content from both halves. Separate English and Spanish groups let each message say everything it needs to.

If you’d rather keep one list, keep the message very short and put Spanish second: “CLOSED today, snow. / CERRADO hoy, nieve.”

The accent quirk

Standard text messages use a limited character set. It includes ñ, é, ü, ¿ and ¡ — but not á, í, ó, or ú. A character outside the set switches the whole message to a different encoding that fits less than half as much text, which is why Airhorn rejects them rather than silently doubling the cost.

In practice, Spanish speakers drop these accents in texts all the time and the message reads naturally: dia, aqui, reunion, sabado, avisame. Keep ñ — mañana is fine.

Translation: short and literal wins

• Write simple English first. Short sentences, no idioms. “We’re slammed” translates badly; “Very busy today” translates fine.
• Machine translation is fine for short operational messages, but have a bilingual employee check your standard templates once.
• Keep times and dates in numbers. 4pm and 1/15 survive translation; “end of day Thursday” can get mangled.

Spanish templates

About the opt-in reply

Airhorn’s opt-in confirmation is a standard text in English, and it’s confirmed with a reply of YES (OK and Y work too). Tell Spanish-speaking employees in person to expect it and to reply YES, so nobody is left unconfirmed because they answered SI.