Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Taxis are often synonymous with the culture in which they operate; they are not always famed for their etiquette or awareness of culture. However, it seems though the UAE might be looking to streamline the way in which their taxi drivers are perceived both in Dubai and in the rest of the UAE. Dubai and the UAE are looking to impose new laws that will require drivers to undergo cultural training and etiquette lessons. They want to encourage their drivers to respect a culture even if it is not their own.
Taxi drivers may have to undergo cultural training in a hope that it will make them more aware of culture differences and of the professional etiquette that is expected of them. The move has come as a reaction to complaints to the Roads and Transport Authority in the UAE and Dubai. The RTA in the UAE and Dubai has said that the culture difference is becoming an issue and that cultural training is needed.
Until recently taxis in the UAE and Dubai were not regulated and the UAE is now trying to enforce permits that will only be issued once drivers have attended classes for professional etiquette and cultural training. In the Dubai and UAE culture there is a huge range of residents and a wide range of ideas to do with culture and personal etiquette. It is hoped though that the UAE and Dubai authorities can help by giving drivers a form of cultural training about respecting the culture of their passengers.
The UAE and Dubai are extreme examples of diversity in culture and how etiquette can differ from person to person and it seems as though the authorities have to go great lengths to fix the issue by issuing cultural training and etiquette permits.

People often think that UK doctors are the pillars of UK society who you can trust implicitly, however it seems that the Europe is insisting on chipping away at the confidence that we have in our doctors.

This is due to foreign doctors entering the UK to work. According to recent figures not all doctors that enter the UK are assessed for their competency in the English language and as a result interpreters are being employed by the NHS to make the doctors understood.

European law states that as long as doctors are qualified to work in the UK health service then the General Medical Council are not able to refuse employment based on poor language skills. This has left the UK health service having to seek language interpreters to translate the language for foreign doctors.

Using interpreters creates an extra step in the medical process that allows for human error. If we need to start employing UK interpreters to translate the language for non-native speaking doctors there would be unnecessary bodies in the operating theatre and hospital wards. Interpreters have a difficult job and they can make mistakes due to the nuances of a language and errors are just not an option when you are dealing with lives.

The UK General Medical Council has made a submission to the European Commission which is currently reviewing laws that allow doctors to practice freely across Europe. As there is no standardised medical qualification it means that is it hard to assess doctors that are not from the UK, let alone whether or not doctors are able to speak the language.

The GMC has known of cases where language interpreters have been needed in theatres and of cases when doctors operating on a patient have spoken to co-workers in a language other than English and this left confusion in the operating theatre.

The benefits of launching operations globally have been well documented. Launching offices in places like India and China has allowed companies like Nestle and Google to harness the benefits of addressing consumers in their own language.
But you don’t have to go abroad to benefit from going bi-lingual. Your operations can stay at home and still significantly increase their consumer base through the use of additional languages.
1.    Cultural Diversity Online
Many countries are culturally diverse today, especially in urban areas, so launching websites that address the multi-lingual roots of your consumers can bring you big business at home. For example the USA has a population of 311 million people, of this number almost 50 million have Hispanic roots. Adopting Spanish-language websites could improve the uptake of internet shopping in this culture-group as they feel that their linguistic needs are being directly addressed. Furthermore on a practical level, roughly 12 million of these people are unable to speak English proficiently meaning that Spanish-language websites are the only way for them to access the web.

2.    Bi-Lingual in-store
However, not all companies want to make the investment in multiple websites, perhaps deciding that the translation output or the cost of personale to run these sites is too high. Some companies such as Home Depot have even found that multiple sites can cause problems where consumers believe they can purchase products in countries like Spain (because the website is in Spanish) whereas the company only currently deliver in the USA. Home Depot’s solution was the facilitation of bi-lingual communication in-store.
Spanish-speaking employees in-store were able to serve the quarter of Hispanic people who don’t speak English and the further fifty percent of Hispanics who, although proficient in English, prefer to communicate in their mother-tongue.

Of course companies can then expand their delivery or offices worldwide in response to the demand for their multiple lingual sites. Companies like Best Buy, NutriSystem, AFLAC and Vonage have all made moves to service their culturally and linguistically diverse consumer base.
So if you haven’t the money or just don’t want to make the move to global offices or delivery at the moment you can still benefit from making your company bi-lingual. Whether online or in-store people respond better when they feel their custom is appreciated; so bi-lingual could not only encourage people to use your services but also ensure they continue to come back to you in the future.

With “size zero”, “obesity epidemic” and “extreme weight loss” being phrases that are almost part of the dictionary these days, the whole world seems to be obsessing about their size and weight. People everywhere are worrying if they are too fat and trying to lose weight and fight back against obesity. We are bombarded by weight issues, the size of celebrities, obesity figures and the fact that fat is bad.
Arizona State University has published a cross cultural study that suggests that the preoccupation with weight and size has now started to infiltrate cultures that are traditionally tolerant of those who carry additional weight and of fat people. It seems that people are starting to have strong aversions to obesity.
The report has collated opinions from over 680 adults around the world. The survey also recorded people’s thoughts on obesity from cultures that are usually positive about fat people. They found that even these results were showing worrying signs that they were no longer as tolerant of obesity and people with weight problems.
The cross cultural study showed that those who were interviewed revealed that they thought that fat people were lazy, unattractive and lacking in self-discipline. This is a shift away from cultural ideals of some countries who viewed fat and additional weight as a sign that you were affluent. The results have raised some concerns about the size zero obsession which has been the cause of many unwanted side effects.
Paradoxically, even though the cross cultural study shows that weight and size have become issues across the world, there seems to have been a rise in obesity levels. According to research the level of obesity has doubled since the 1980s. This is a concern for health professionals who are already struggling to cope with the high obesity level.
It seems that this obsession with body fat, weight loss and being a size zero seems set to run and run with long term consequences on the world’s health (and weight) as a result.
So it seems that size really does matter!

If you are in need of a boost to your translation sales then you might want to take a look at a new guide that has come from The Common Sense Advisory entitled “How to Drive Translation Sales”.
This guide offers a manual on how translation companies can help to guide their sales teams back to selling more and achieving higher sales targets. The manual claims to get your translation sales team selling and therefore pushing up your profits.
Business sense determines that in order to get your sales team working to your advantage then your company will need to have a very clear guide to its selling strategy. However it is a fact that many companies see their sales figures drop as a result of their translation services not having an organised sales guide for their staff to follow.
The theory behind the new manual “How to Drive Translation Sales” is based on The Common Sense Advisory’s Localization Maturity Model which claims to help bolster selling techniques by providing a strategic manual for selling.
Instead of using regular hit and miss selling techniques this guide hopes to change the way that you are selling your translation services, by showing companies how to create their own manual for their sales force to follow. This manual will help guide them to maximising their sales figures. This is done by using a comprehensive selling guide when approaching new clients and by looking at their translation needs as a whole, therefore providing a solution based selling method.
The manual was a result of collaboration between The Common Sense Advisory and Selling Translations®. Both of these companies agree that it is a powerful manual for those who are looking to overhaul their sales techniques in order to maximise translation sales.
The guide claims to help you put together your very own manual to outline a selling strategy for your translation business and offers a helpful guide on such things as:

• Average salaries for translation salespeople.
• A guide on how to keep your translation sales in line with your corporate strategy.
• A watch list of common mistakes that lead to selling failure.

For more information on the manual go to commonsenseadvisory.com.

The 20th International World Wide Web Conference that was held in Hyderabad, India has announced exciting new language translation software. Indian developers hope the new software will start to transform the way computer assisted translation is used in language translation throughout the world.
At present a vast amount of information on the internet is being wasted due to language barriers. It is thought that translation software is the key to making this information accessible to those who are not able to speak the language in which it was originally written.
Abdul Kalam (the former President of APJ) launched the new software named Machine Translation Systems (also known as Content Multiplier Tools) on 31st March at the WWW Conference in Hyderabad. The translation software was developed using funding from the Programme for Technology Development for Indian Languages.
It is hoped that the software will be highly successful due to the large number of people worldwide who speak a form of the Indian language (there are over 122 forms of the Indian language that are spoken throughout India). This means that with over 1 billion of the world’s population speak a form of the language, this leaves a massive pool of Indian people who will find the language translation software useful.
Currently the translation software is able to be used in three main modes. These are Indian to Indian, English to Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi and Urdu and finally English to Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Urdu and Tamil. There are currently twelve language pairs in the software and it is hoped that every few months more language pairs will be added until the number reaches 26 pairs in total.
Many different institutions were involved in the making of the software and one of these institutions was IIIT – Hyderabad. The director (Rajeev Sangal) commented that the Indian to Indian translation software trials were proving to be more successful as Indian languages were very similar in syntax, lexis and grammar (which makes it easier for the translation software) and that the translation of English to Indian pairs were proving to be a little more complicated. However the developers (of whom 200 were Indian students) are encouraging people to make use of the language translation software and experiment with it whilst it is still free to use.