Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Free online Chinese lessons are now live on Loquella.com. Anyone interested in learning Standard Mandarin Chinese can now use Loquella’s language tool to practice and learn Chinese.

The most essential and unique feature in the Chinese lessons is that Chinese characters are aligned underneath the Pinyin (Romanization of Chinese characters) text to aid in learning Chinese characters. This feature is important to anyone interested in learning to read in Chinese. The lessons also focus heavily on teaching proper pronunciation and stressing its importance when learning Chinese. The lessons also contain detailed images in the grammar tip area to illustrate and allow users to interact with the Chinese lessons.

Read more: Chinese 

Thousands of French tourists are set to arrive on the streets of King’s Cross in a matter of months - and businesses are being encouraged to greet their new customers with at least a “Bonjour”.

King’s Cross Business Forum is helping its 2,000 members learn the lingo in the run-up to the Eurostar running from St Pancras International from November 14. In a bid to help the area’s businesses snap up extra custom from the continent, more than 50 snatches of French conversation have been recorded - on topics from shopping to getting to the station.

Sandi Phillips, leader of the King’s Cross Business Forum, said: “We are going to have a number of visitors from France and the rest of the continent. We are expecting more business and it’s really important to tap into this. They need to improve their language skills - that’s number one - and to be aware of the cultural differences. We want to make French people welcome and the most obvious thing is to learn to communicate.”

Read more: King’s Cross 

“Think global, act local” is an oft-used catchphrase by marketers and a goal that many big brands aspire to. But even in this era of instant global communications, American companies are far less adept at global brand management than their European counterparts.

The problem for US companies, it seems, can be summed up in one word. “Language.” In fact fewer than a quarter of American companies are able to offer a consistent online customer experience in multiple languages, according to a study by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Global Information Management specialists SDL.

Read more: Language 

The UK and China may not be ready to break the language barriers in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

According to Ethnologue data, Mandarin is spoken by more than a billion people worldwide, compared to an estimated 600 million users of English, and while English business transactions still account for 28 per cent of the world’s GDP, Mandarin is fast becoming a serious contender at 23 per cent.

Peggy Lohmann, spokeswoman for Rosetta Stone, the world’s leading language learning software, commented: “With the 2008 Olympic Games looming large on the horizon and with the influx of visitors this will bring to China, it is vital to consider the implications. Despite the common assumption that English is spoken everywhere, it is still notoriously difficult to get by in China without even a basic grasp of Mandarin.”

Read more: Beijing 2008 

A nice little article looking at how McDonald’s have localized their menus across the globe:

India

In India, there are no Big Macs because the Hindu people don’t eat beef.

However, they have the Maharaja Mac, which is a Big Mac made of lamb or chicken meat. There is also a vegetarian burger, the McAloo Tikki.

Read more: McD’s 

Research and Markets has announced the addition of “The Expat Checklist” to their offering.

The Expat Checklist is a practical and simple guide to items that should be considered in an expatriate agreement, including hints on developing a successful expatriate agreement.

“Kudos to the Expat Checklist! This checklist was really the only thing I found on the web that discussed all the upfront issues and gotcha’s to watch out for in negotiating my expat contract. This definitely helped me to think of a few things I would’ve forgotten until it was too late. It was very helpful!” - Expatriate in Geneva

The Expat Checklist is based upon the experience of the author - a sales and marketing executive with an International MBA. It includes input from other expatriates, and most importantly benefits from the mistakes the author and others made during various expatriate agreement negotiations. The author’s own expatriate experience was ultimately successful, despite an acquisition by a competitor and resulting lay-offs during the assignment. His expatriate agreement was the key to that successful experience.

Read more: Checklist 

Shambo, a sacred bull kept by a group of Hindus in Wales who has tested positive for bovine tuberculosis, can be slaughtered, a London court ruled on Monday, overturning last week’s block on his death sentence.

The Shambo saga began earlier this month when the Welsh regional government ordered that the six-year-old animal, the temple bull at the Skanda Vale community in Llanpumsaint, Carmarthen, be put to death on health grounds.

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With the launch of the Verizon Prepaid Interpretation Service, the inability to communicate with non-English speakers should no longer be a problem that breaks a business deal or prevents social interaction with a contact who speaks another language.

The new service is the first of its kind to provide mobile, on-demand, quick, global access to professional interpreters in more than 170 languages. It is ideal for travelers, business professionals or anyone interacting with people who either speak no English or just a limited amount.

“The world has become more accessible, but a major barrier to doing business in a global community is the lack of a common language,” said Ken Kelley, product manager for Verizon. “By offering businesses and international travelers an on-demand, mobile, over-the-phone and culturally sensitive interpretation service, the language barrier can be bridged.”

Read more: Verizon 

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Self- Reliance.”

Had “brand manager” existed as a job title in 1841, Emerson could have added that to the list of professions enamored of consistency, though not necessarily of the foolish kind. Few things fire up marketers as much as the desire to present a consistent image for the brands they oversee. Consumers, they assume, equate consistency with quality.

There used to be one exception. Many leading brands in the past were managed differently across national boundaries, because every country had its own marketing staff with separate ideas about how best to connect with local consumers.

But globalization and the rise of the Internet have dealt serious blows to the idea of local brand management. Companies that used to swear by it, like Unilever, have backed away. And companies are adopting global advertising themes, even if many of them are tailored for local markets - an approach called “global-local.” HSBC, the London-based bank, epitomizes this approach, billing itself as “the world’s local bank.”

But, according to SDL International, a company that provides translation services to corporate clients and others, there is still one big barrier to international consistency in marketing: language.

Read more: Language 

Kwintessential client, the heating and ventilation manufacturer Powrmatic, have been recognised by the Regional Language Network South West (RLN SW) as industry champions of good practice in using languages and cultural understanding to improve business performance.

The firm exports to China, Japan and Dubai as well as numerous markets within Europe.

Read more: Powrmatic