Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Poor punctuality is such a brake on Ivory Coast’s economic development that the West African country has come up with a novel way to combat tardiness: win a house if you demonstrate you can turn up on time.

Backed by President Laurent Gbagbo and devised by a local public relations firm, “Punctuality Night” kicked off at eight o’clock sharp Saturday night, rewarding business people and civil servants for exceptional timekeeping.

Pitched with the slogan “‘African time’ is killing Africa, let’s fight it,” its organizers hope to heighten awareness of how missed appointments, meetings or even late buses cut productivity in a region where languid tardiness is the norm.

Read more: Ivory Coast 

Autumn is upon us, which means the return of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s also Ramadan, and for its customers in the Middle East, Starbucks has created a new drink it hopes becomes a Ramadan tradition — the Date Frappuccino.

It would seem like a real blunder, maybe even cultural insensitivity, for Starbucks to market a new food product just for the month of Ramadan — the month Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. But Starbucks executives seem to think this caffeinated version of “think globally, act locally” strikes the right marketing balance.

Starbucks, now with 200 stores in the Middle East (mostly in oil-rich Gulf countries), has operated in the region since 1999 with the help of a trading partnership from the region. MH Alshaya, a Kuwaiti-owned retail specialist company, has also helped H&M, The Body Shop and Foot Locker become established throughout the Middle East.

Starbucks Middle East Marketing Manager Antoun Abou Jaoude emphasized the company’s intention in this release. “The new Date Frappuccino reflects a beverage that has been created for the first time specifically for our Middle East customers and we hope it is enjoyed throughout Ramadan,” he said.Read more: Starbucks 

Cultural “briefing packs” giving tips on acceptable behaviour will be handed out to immigrants under Government plans to be announced today.

Immigrants will be given an information pack setting out their rights and responsibilities and telling them what to expect from national laws and traditions.

The packs are part of a £50 million “hearts and minds” drive aimed at building bridges between Britain’s ethnic communities.

Read more: Packs 

· Language skills have the potential to add far more value to the European economy than they do at present.

· English is a lingua franca for business but on its own, as a first or a second language, it’s not enough for businesses in Europe to compete, thrive and prosper in the 21st century.

· We need workers in all kinds of different occupations to embrace the principle of plurilingualism and we need the education sector to work hand in hand with employers so that this happens.

· The time may have come for a framework similar to the Common European Framework, but for intercultural competence.

These were some of the key messages summed up at the close of a day’s debate in Brussels on 21 September hosted by the Portuguese Presidency of the European Commission and instigated by the European Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, as a major forum event bringing together – for the first time at European level – over 300 employers, public agents and members of the education sector from across the European Union.

Read more: Isabella Moore 

Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, has announced a £50m investment to help local authorities boost integration and the creation of specialist teams to tackle tensions in communities sparked by changing patterns of migration.

The money – up from £2m this year – is to be channelled over three years to groups which promote integration, rather than towards bodies which represent a single ethnic or religious identity. The change in approach is to be accompanied by guidance to local authorities that they should only spend money on translating documents into foreign languages where necessary, and put a much greater emphasis on teaching English.

Read more: Blears 

In today’s Telegraph Online, Charlie Croker reveals the highlights from his second compendium of baffling broken English encountered abroad……..

That this sort of thing marks a bond between travellers was clear from the start. Shortly after encountering a Japanese car hire leaflet (“When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn”), I found myself on a ferry to La Gomera in the Canaries, reading: “Keep this ticket up the end of your trip”.

Illustration from Charlie Croker’s Still lost in Translation

Was there a book in this? Friends’ responses suggested there might well be. One recalled – from more than a decade before – the sign in front of construction works at a Bolivian airport: “Sorry for the bother.”

Another remembered a sign on a broken turnstile at Salzburg passport control: “Out of work.”Read more: Lost in Translation 

The Philippine government is to seek an apology from the producers of the hit US television series “Desperate Housewives” for a racial slur against Filipino medics, the Philippine Daily Inquirer said on its web site Wednesday.

The officials cited a recent episode where actress Teri Hatcher, who plays Susan Mayer, asked whether the person attending to her during a medical consultation “can I check those diplomas because I want to make sure that they’re not from some med school in the Philippines.”

Asked if the government would seek an apology from the producers of the show, and ABC television network that carries it, executive secretary Eduardo Ermita said: “Yes, I think we should, on behalf of our Filipino professionals.”

“On the face, we can look at it as a racial slur. We are looked down upon too much, considering the number of our medical professionals in the US,” the Inquirer quoted Ermita as saying.

Read more: Desperate Housewives 

Some of our more regular visitors may be aware that we are currently running a survey asking people if they believe intercultural skills (or training) would have benefited troops in Iraq.

In the short time we have run the survey we have received a decent response but now want to drive the numbers up in order to get an accurate reflection of people’s beliefs.

The idea behind the question the survey poses is to examine whether people appreciate or believe that the “hearts and minds” approach is now also crucial to winning conflicts in the modern age, rather than “shock and awe”. The situation in Iraq all will agree has not been ideal, but moves from the U.S. military seem to suggest that they are now appreciating that providing troops with skills to communicate with people are more and more crucial.

We have seen the provision of cross-cultural coaching for troops in Iraq or going to Iraq become increasingly called for and as a result provided. “Cultural understanding is a weapon,” Edward Slavis, a Marine captain, told about 150 troops from the 1st Radio Battalion and 1st Reconnaissance Battalion about to go to Iraq in February 2007. “You need to prepare for the war of ideas and beliefs through cultural learning and understanding.” The British miliary establishment also seems keen to provide their men on the ground with the appropriate skills. A Unit Education Officer, Captain Pete Henning, commented “Getting it right makes a massive difference. They [meaning the Iraqis] are very forgiving of language errors, but cultural mistakes are unforgivable. It’s a ‘hearts and minds’ game. We make soldiers question why the Arabs behave in such a way and question their own perceptions.”

As well as cultural awareness troops are also being given either language training. In December 2006, Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli told Baghdad-based journalists that a poll conducted among 1st Cavalry Division soldiers following their 2004 deployment to Iraq pointed out how important they believed language skills to be. On top of actual language learning the military has also invested heavily in all sorts of translation gadgets to help troops speak to locals.

A sign of the growing importance of looking outwards from the USA also manifest in President Bush’s National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), a plan to further strengthen national security through developing foreign language skills. The NSLI hopes to dramatically increase the number of Americans learning critical need foreign languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Farsi and others.

The question we are posing is this: “ do you believe that intercultural training could have benefited troops in Iraq?”. At present the results show 79% of respondents believe it would have been a benefit.

What do you think?

To take the poll simply go to our Home Page, scroll to the bottom and you will see the poll.

New research from Foreign Currency Direct has found that as one in four Brits up sticks and buy a home abroad, the interest in foreign languages is growing with one in ten making the effort to learn the local lingo.

Foreign Currency Direct has been running its ‘Bail out Britain’ campaign which has studied the reasons behind the recent increase in people migrating abroad and has discovered that just under a third (30%) of Brits are competent in a different language and a further 37 per cent attempt to keep up their language skills will regular visits abroad.

Read more: Language Learning 

The North American Free Trade Agreement (Weintraub, 2004) and lower labour costs in Mexico have caused many US companies to move their operations south of the border.  While the majority of the workers in the US-owned plants are Mexican, some of the employees are US workers on temporary expat assignments.

While not randomly selected from a large pool of expat workers, my ten interviewees did hold a variety of jobs.  Several of them were managers and engineers.  Others in the group included a US Air Force officer, an HR representative, a Director of Research and Development, and a missionary.  Two were female and eight were male.  For the vast majority of the group this was their first expat assignment and they considered the assignment a means of advancing their careers and providing their families with a rich cultural experience.  Half of the workers said that they would be interested in doing another expat assignment in the future.

Read more: Expatica