Lost in Translation is a simple workshop activity to spark a discussion around what makes effective communication. It can also be used to spark a conversation about how a group wants to communicate with each other throughout a session. Just adapt the debriefing questions to suit.
Materials Required: A4 Paper and Felt Pens.
Preparation: No preparation required.
Set-Up Instructions for Participants:
“Shortly, we are going to look at what makes effective communication, but before we do, I’d love to run a quick experiment with you. In a minute, I’m going to invite you to write a sentence across the top of your page. The sentence can be about anything you want, but needs to be at least 10 words long. Then, we’ll do a few simple tasks to see how well we can communicate that message.”
How to Facilitate the Activity:
1. Give participants the set-up instructions as above and invite them to write their sentence at the top of the page. It works best if the paper is held as portrait, rather than landscape.
2. Once everyone has written their sentence, invite participants to pass their page to the right.
3. Invite participants to draw a picture to illustrate the sentence they have just received. The picture should be reasonably small, as the process is repeated a few times and all the communication needs to fit on one page.
4. Once everyone has drawn their picture, invite participants to fold the original sentence to the back, so it can’t be seen. Participants then pass their page to the right.
5. Invite participants to write a sentence that describes the picture they have received.
6. Once everyone has written their sentence, invite participants to fold the picture to the back, so it can’t be seen. Participants pass their page to the right.
7. Repeat the process going between picture and sentence as many times as you like. Usually, 3 times is enough.
8. Invite participants to open the page and notice how much the message has changed.
Debriefing Questions:
- What do you notice about that final message vs. the original message?
- At what point do you think it all went wrong?
- Still using the sentence and picture format, how might we have adapted the activity to make sure the original—intended—message got through?
- How else might we ensure that a message is interpreted correctly through multiple people?
- How might this activity relate to the way you effectively communicate with each other?