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Anna | August 2, 2011
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Two kiss or not two kiss? That is the question.

Yet another international business etiquette conundrum.

My sister is lucky enough to have left the rain-soaked UK and moved to the much more pleasing climate of Toulouse in the South West of France. One year into her exciting new life and she has secured a great job but has encountered a rather large cultural hurdle that she has struggled to overcome, despite being fluent in French.

There are blogs-a-plenty out there regarding international business etiquette covering things like handshakes, eye contact, business cards, dining with clients and other cultural differences that need to be taken into account when doing business in other countries.  However, there isn’t an awful lot in the public domain about how and when you should “bisou” (kiss) a colleague.

In the UK and the US a handshake is reserved for first introductions or contacts that you meet infrequently. It isn’t something that tends to be used with people that you see every day in the office and a simple “good morning” will usually suffice.

So, imagine you’re suddenly in a professional environment where colleagues greet each other in meetings with a kiss on each cheek. Now, this seems simple enough; you watch what other people are doing and replicate, right?  Wrong.

Even world leaders get it wrong.

It seems that there are some people you kiss and some you do not. There are some that everyone in the room kisses but that you don’t know well enough to, so they recoil in horror at your over familiar gesture.  Then, when your handshake is met with someone leaning in to bisou you, imagine the offence you may have caused with your cold, formal, British greeting.

My sister obviously did what any sensible person would do. She asked her French friends what the “rules” are.  It soon became clear that this approach wasn’t going to be particularly helpful however. Some said it was unusual to kiss in a working environment and had never come across this during their careers in France, while others got into huge debate around what that rules are. I decided to help her by asking a French intern at my UK workplace who was equally baffled and couldn’t provide a clear answer. The results of our combined market research into the rules of this element of business communication….there are no rules.

At first she dreaded running the morning gauntlet, filled with fear around who she was going to offend on that particular day with her clumsy British salutations. However, time has passed and she is getting the hang of it, based on getting to know the individuals, following their lead and not worrying as much about getting things wrong occasionally.

I am sure that nobody was genuinely offended in those initial months in the new job. However, it would be interesting to know if anybody has encountered similar confusion and if, hidden away somewhere, there are concrete rules to help us Brits fit in more quickly in the rest of Europe!

Category: Cultures |
Anna | April 27, 2011
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Language fit for a royal wedding…but not for everyday use.

"One must speak properly".

 

With just two days to go until the wedding of Prince William and his bride-to-be, Kate Middleton, it seems like the ideal time to once again consider the use of The Queen’s English in today’s society.

I have a vested interest in this topic as my mother grew up in Inverness where, according to linguistic experts, the best Queen’s English is spoken.  I had my speech corrected from an early age and, to be honest, I still have it corrected today.  However I am pleased that this is the case as it has definitely been an advantage to me in my chosen career of communication – although my colleagues can vouch for the fact that I can by no means claim to be a grammar or pronunciation Queen!

Award winning films, such as The Queen and The King’s Speech, which have been viewed around the world by millions, have allowed this old fashioned way of speaking to be shared on a global scale but does it make sense to protect this form of the English language, which is now considered by many to be dated, indefinitely?

English has changed significantly over the years.  The term, “The Queen’s English”, dates back to the 16th century and I’m not sure that anyone from the Elizabethan age would understand what some recent entrants to the Oxford English Dictionary, such as OMG, actually mean!

The Queen’s English Society certainly has a strong view, with its president publishing a very interesting article in The Independent newspaper highlighting concerns around the dumbing down of the English language.

So, should we be encouraging native English-speakers to adopt the traditional and regal way of speaking or does it confuse people trying to learn English as a second language?  Similarly, does it complicate things for the translation community. English translation of a company’s literature, brochures and websites might read strangely to English speakers if adhering to the rules of the Queen’s English and most businesses hope to convey their brand and messages using a conversational style and tone that has become commonplace in today’s marketing collateral.  At the same time, however, would you dismiss a job applicant’s CV if it was written in an informal style and do you still expect job seekers to submit a CV written in the Queen’s English? It seems to me that there is a time and a place for the most traditional use of the English language and I am sure that the royal wedding attendees will be putting their Queen’s English into practice this weekend.

One final point for those champions of the English language.  All languages evolve over time and let us not forget that English in fact a West Germanic language that originates from Anglo-Frisian dialects!

Category: Cultures, Languages, Translation | Tags: , ,
Anna | March 8, 2011
5 comments

Acceptable accents in the business world

Be proud of your language roots

I was surprised this morning to stumble across a press release posted on the San Francisco Chronicle’s site promoting accent reduction programmes in the US.  The slant of the press release was to basically to highlight the fact that more than a quarter of people in the skilled workforce of the US who have either a doctoral degree, a degree or a master’s are “foreign-born” and how those individuals are missing out on opportunities in business because of their accents.

It is safe to say that international speakers must be valuable economically if they make up more than a quarter of the US workforce. The shocking part is that the press release claims many of these individuals are unable to convey the true level of their academic competence because of their roots. Roughly translated (pardon the pun) this suggests that people with foreign accents who are speaking English in the workplace are considered to be less academic and therefore less able to climb the career ladder.  So US employees are held back in their roles  because of accents, despite the massive push for more multilingual content across companies globally?

With offices and colleagues in the US, I am not convinced that this is the case but who am I to argue with facts?  Ok, I’ll give it a go.

I feel passionate about accents and their perceived impact in the business environment because I am one of those people with a very strong accent.  Born and raised in Glasgow, I left Scotland as soon as I had completed my degree at University and moved to London, the top financial centre of the world. I was offered the first job that I interviewed for, which  thankfully has been a common theme in most jobs I have applied for.  Is this because I was the best candidate? I hope so. Is it because I was memorable because of my accent in a sea of English people?  I tend to think that it has played a pretty big role.

An accent alone will not get you the job.  It has to be backed up with confidence, experience and an ability to speak articulately so that your interviewer will understand you – accent or no accent. I am extremely proud of my Scottish accent.  Yes, I have had to slow down my delivery (even people in parts of Scotland can’t always keep up with a Glaswegian conversation) and certain words have definitely softened over my 11 years in England but this has been due to time spent with my peers and not a deliberate decision.  I would never want to, nor would I ever expect a colleague to “reduce” their accent in order to progress professionally.

Perhaps I am missing something.  Maybe some companies do consider people with different accents to be less able to progress, more risky to put in front of clients and less competent in delivering tasks.  I hope not and I am pleased to say that my current employer would never discriminate in this way and encourages employees from different parts of the country and the world into their English-speaking offices.

Languages, dialects and accents are so precious.  We should be doing everything we can to preserve them, not reduce them.

Category: Accents, Business Management, Cultures, Dialects, Languages, Localization |
Anna | January 31, 2011
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Getting over the export barriers – again!

The world is your oyster

It’s time for us to get back on our favourite hobbyhorse here at Applied Language Solutions after reading an interesting piece on the BBC’s website this morning .

Small firms are missing out on exports…well, what do you know?

Rather than go down the “how many times do we have to say it” route, it’s far better for us to welcome this coverage on the export issue, which raises awareness of the opportunity that overseas sales presents; not only to UK companies but to the country and the economy as a whole.

The article focuses on a campaign driven by UKTI to highlight the benefits of exporting and overcome the perceived barriers such as resources, financing and understanding the culture. The subject of language as a barrier is briefly touched upon in the pamphlet promoted within the article, which refers readers to free online translation tools such as Google Translate.  However it isn’t always enough to use a tool like this as there is more than just local documentation translation to consider when targeting overseas markets. Pure machine translation can also ruffle a few cultural feathers along the way if the translations are too literal. Nothing worse than accidentally causing offence when trying to establish yourself in a new market so best to use it for certain types of content.

Translating a website is the ideal starting point to sell to other countries. With customers four times more likely to buy from a site in their own language it makes perfect sense and you don’t necessarily need a sales force on the ground if you can sell online. Before assuming this will be a huge, labour intensive and costly task bear in mind that you don’t actually have to translate the whole site.  Some targeted landing pages and a translated FAQ section might be all you need to get started.  Multilingual SEO can also help in terms of ensuring the right people, in the right markets get to the right pages on your site.  So getting the keywords, the meta data and any Pay Per Click adverts localized properly is critical.

To tackle the existing trade deficit we need to get more companies exporting and, despite our efforts through our Export Box initiative to date and regular rants on this blog, there are still too many companies out there believing that it simply isn’t an option for them.

We need more articles like this, more support and guidance from Government and a greater understanding of how easy it is to get started.

Ok, so we have been saying it since 2009.  Who knows, maybe more voices singing from the same hymn sheet is what we need to really get that mindset shift to happen once and for all.

Fingers crossed.

Category: Business Management, Cultures, Free Translation, Localization, Machine Translation, Translation |
Anna | September 14, 2010
5 comments

Post editing – getting out what you put in

Spreading the word on healthy living

Spreading the word on healthy living

As a communications professional I’m always impressed by the volumes of live information available and how it’s all compiled in the first place. In fact, any marketing professional who claims not to have used Wikipedia as a general information source in recent years, when writing press releases or articles would, in my opinion, be hard to find.

This is why I was particularly intrigued to read an article about Google.org launching its Health Speaks crowd-sourcing initiative recently, which calls upon volunteers to edit machine translations of health information found on sites such as Wikipedia into Arabic, Hindi and Swahili.

Crowd sourcing is obviously becoming more popular across many industries to gain opinion, share knowledge and collate information, and it was only a matter of time before translation would actively come into the mix.  But audiences need to bear in mind that the information collated in Wikipedia, the source from which the Google Translator Toolkit and volunteer linguists will provide the translations, won’t always be factually accurate.

While I applaud this method of generating content from community contributions, there is a particular risk in relation to the translation of health information.  Incorrect medical translations could lead to embarrassing mistakes.  Worst case scenario; a poor translation could potentially become a health risk.

Machine translation has gained real traction in recent months with major organisations putting their trust and their budgets into a post edited version, where the translation output is amended in terms of spelling and grammar and glossaries are applied to ensure it makes sense to the intended audience.

Any professional linguist, which I assume the volunteer editors will be, is trained to rely on the accuracy of the source material.  As a translation company, we spend a lot of time ensuring that we on-board customers properly and this includes checking the quality of the source material and simplifying it where necessary in order for the translations to make more sense.  We also insist on having target language glossaries in place to ensure technical terms are accurately understood and therefore translated by the linguist.  I would be interested to know how much source checking will be done by Health Speaks as the initiative builds momentum and more languages (and more detailed health material) are introduced to the initiative.

It looks as though Google is sticking to the right kind of content to avoid any of these problems for now – with a focus on health tips, disease prevention and dietary advice, rather than symptom-driven diagnosis.  We can expect more organisations to jump on the crowd sourcing bandwagon and use machine translations rather than human linguists, which could present a quality issue that may need to be addressed further down the line.  When translating medical information it’s critical that the translations are accurate and, as we say time and time again, a translation is only as good as the source material. Google has done the right thing and only selected pages that have been reviewed, but is it being verified by a medical professional?

Risks (which I am confident Google has taken into account) aside, this is a really interesting project with a genuine opportunity to help local charities through donation incentives.  So, as long as the audiences remembers that the information published is not necessarily from a qualified medical practitioner then the initiative will provide a good starting point for people looking for health advice.

So, let’s watch this space for now and commend Google on its contribution.

Category: Free Translation, Languages, Technology, Translation, Translation Mistakes | Tags:
Anna | January 15, 2010
One comment

Dog understands only Polish commands…

Ten out of ten for the good people at the RSPCA Oldham for getting some much deserved publicity, particularly at this time of year, about dogs needing homes, by informing the media that one of their four legged residents can only understand Polish commands.

Polilsh Scenthounds... probably don't understand English

Polilsh Scenthounds... probably don't understand English either.

Being based in the North West of England this is probably not as unusual as we might all think, with Polish now being one of the most common languages that we receive interpreter requests for in the region – in fact it is in the top three along with Urdu and Arabic.

The most unusual language we book interpreters for, out of our 4000 interpreter requests per month, is Malay.

Who knows, there may just be a dog out there that only understands “Duduk” and “Tunggu” rather than sit and stay…

Category: Languages, Translation | Tags: , ,
Anna | November 18, 2009
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Fear of failure…or fear of financial guilt?

globalHaving attended the London launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009 (GEW) on Monday morning, interesting points were raised by a number of speakers around the cultural differences between the UK and the US when it comes to wealth creation and entrepreneurial success.

Dr Carl Schramm, a respected developer of entrepreneurial talent and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, joked about how the UK tends to come up with ideas for new technologies and innovation, which are then acquired and marketed by the US, who have the confidence to see an idea through.  Is the issue therefore that fear of failure in the UK means we are also afraid to market potentially brilliant ideas?

As a marketing professional it is incredibly satisfying to work with driven entrepreneurs, many of whom have failed at some stage in their careers but have not been put off trying again.  In order to create inspirational role models for our future entrepreneurs, both the business model and the visionary leader behind it should be promoted and we shouldn’t be embarrassed to do this.

Perhaps if the UK borrowed the attitude of its peers across the Atlantic and had much more self belief and, in the words of Dragon’s Den member Peter Jones, started encouraging people to say “I can” rather than “can I?” then emergence from the current recession would be quicker.

Jim O’Neill, Global Head of Economic Research at Goldman Sachs, voiced concern that that the UK seems to have an emerging view that wealth creation isn’t a good thing, having been scarred by our recent economic decline.  With such detailed reporting in the media, on both banking bonuses and the earnings of many of FTSE CEOs, it’s no wonder that there may be some reluctance for entrepreneurial businesses to stick their necks out and race towards financial reward.

The belief that there will be criticism of pay packets and negative responses from members of the public may in fact be preventing some of our rising stars from taking that first step.  The GEW speakers highlighted the fact that fast growth and rewarding staff needn’t be considered evidence that the wheels have come off a business, as long as there is a scalable model in place and those individuals have genuinely helped build a business that is creating jobs and boosting the local economy. While many have had to postpone growth during the recession and freeze salaries, the story isn’t (and shouldn’t be) the same for all businesses.

Lord Davies, Minister of State for Trade, Investment and Small Business, appealed to the many journalists attending GEW to stop focusing so much on business failures and instead profile the success stories that still exist.  We are reliant on our entrepreneurs to help rebuild the economy, but we need some help from the media to challenge the opinion that is dangerous to talk about financial success.  GEW 2009 makes the world focus on enterprise for one week each year but wouldn’t it be better to celebrate the successes of our entrepreneurial veterans and encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs every single day, regardless of their geographic location, the country in which they trade and the language that they speak.

Category: Translation | Tags: , , , , ,