British headlines this week cover all manner of things, from Simon Cowell quitting American Idol, to the grit shortage – but one thing I’ve noticed is that the media don’t seem to be very interested in the UK being almost out of recession.

Why is that, exactly – perhaps it’s another false dawn (we’ve had a few of these already), or maybe it’s because we were resigned to the fact that a recovery was always going to take longer here in the UK?

Either scenario makes for a pretty sad state of affairs if you think about it.

World leaders: China and Germany, at least in exporting, are enjoying the good life.

For a start, China has just emerged as the world’s largest exporter, overtaking Germany’s long-standing reign. Pretty big news then…

Well actually, no. Not here in the UK. And why is that, exactly? Is our attitude to new languages really that bad? I would guess not, but rather because of one ‘scary’ word – exporting.

Here in the UK we seem to be inherently ashamed of discussing the reason for China and Germany’s economic success on the world stage (exporting) since it’s something that, comparatively, we as a nation don’t do a great deal of.

Now, as a provider of language services, which enables other companies to trade internationally, it seems this is a very convenient argument for us to make – that exporting will help us out of recession. Too convenient, even.

However, what it does do is validate our place to make such arguments, which have been made and proven time and time again.

We see our customers doing well on a daily basis because they have taken the decision to invest in practical, cost effective measures that gets them exporting. Even if it’s just simple things like landing pages in other languages, with email translation services done on an ad hoc basis, exporting need never be something to fear simply because budget is an issue, or even (say it quietly) because language is a big concern.

We’ve said before that Government should be incentivising smaller businesses to export more as other governments have done, helping to redress their trade and budget deficits.

With a general election just around the corner, this could be the time for all parties to showcase ideas – and actions – that will stimulate natural, sustainable growth in our economy.

The UK could easily be one of these countries that lead exporting. Unfortunately however, it seems like our prediction is becoming a reality and that we may be just about to miss out on the export boat, which is being steered by the likes of China and Germany.