Intercultural Communication and Translation News

For a long time, Kraft Foods Inc., the second-largest international food company by revenue, struggled to make headway in Asia-Pacific, the world’s most populous region.

“The top line [revenue] was sluggish, profits were under squeeze. And critically, we didn’t have a strategic direction,” says Pradeep Pant, Kraft’s president for Asia-Pacific. “There was a lot of activity, a lot of churn, but not much impact.”

Kraft’s operating profit in Asia-Pacific between 2001 and 2007 was “slightly negative.” But starting in 2008, operating profit in the region has grown at a double-digit rate. The company doesn’t break out Asia-Pacific performance figures, but Kraft’s global net income in the second quarter jumped 11% to $827 million from $745 million in the year earlier period; sales fell 5.9% to $10.16 billion in the quarter.

The turnaround prescription in the region had several critical elements, including Kraft’s $7 billion acquisition of French company Groupe Danone’s global packaged baked-goods business in 2007. (Last week, Kraft’s latest major expansion effort, a $16.73 billion bid for Cadbury PLC of Britain, was rejected. Kraft said it would continue its quest, which would create a global food giant.) Another key “game changer” was that “we gave people close to the point of action the power to take decisions,” says Mr. Pant, who was ap

pointed to his role in January 2008. Also crucial was instilling a “mindset of risk-taking, people willing to experiment.”

That experimentation extended to altering product formulations to suit local tastes. For instance, when Kraft’s research showed that Chinese consumers found Oreo cookies too sweet, “we toned down the sugar, whereas the Indonesian version is definitely sweeter than the Chinese product.” As a result, he says, Oreo is now the best-selling packaged cookie in China.

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The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul.

“Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.”

At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Mr. Lee, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice.

The policy and a novel training program to introduce shamans to the principles of Western medicine are part of a national movement to consider patients’ cultural beliefs and values when deciding their medical treatment.

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Recent news from the Far East and Europe that several economies are moving out of recession seemed to come as something of a surprise to a number of economists. To date China, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Portugal, and Greece have all reported figures suggesting they’re on their way out of recession.

Yet our friends at Google are now sitting on probably the most accurate economic barometer of all. Google’s management can see on a daily or, at worst, monthly basis how the world’s major economies are doing. Even looking at the figures Google releases produces some fascinating insights.

Bearing in mind that Google isn’t first in some world economies that are emerging from the “downturn” with vigor, the company’s international sales figures, when compared with the U.S. and U.K. — as released by them — are striking.

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A blockbuster sci-fi movie which caricatures Nigerians as gangsters and cannibals and a Sony PlayStation advert which implies they are fraudsters have infuriated a government battling to improve the country’s image.

South African film “District 9,” which has topped the UK box office for two straight weeks and ranked in the top 10 in North America, is an allegory on segregation and xenophobia, with alien life forms cooped up in a township set in Johannesburg.

None of the groups shown comes out particularly well, but the Nigerians are portrayed as gangsters, cannibals, pimps and prostitutes, while their leader’s name is pronounced Obasanjo — the same as that of Nigeria’s former president.

Nigeria has banned cinemas from showing it.

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