Intercultural Communication and Translation News

The business set up in the Philippines is hierarchical. Intercultural management needs to take into account the need to maintain a formal manner and pay strict attention to titles, positions, and hierarchical relationships. Expect to find many gatekeepers whose job is to protect the schedule of and limit access to the ultimate decision maker. In this relationship-driven culture, you will find it easier to make the proper contacts if a third party who already has a relationship with the decision maker makes the introduction.

Filipinos avoid behaviors that would make either party lose face. This leads to an indirect communication style, so carefully watch facial expressions and body language. This is a country where a smile may mean many different things, not all of them positive.

Read more > Intercultural Management Philippines

Air Force leadership recognizes that the cross-cultural performance of Air Force members now plays a greater role in mission success than ever before. AF/A1D therefore asked RAND to assist in developing a comprehensive program for preparing members of the Air Force in crosscultural skills.

To better understand the behaviors that the Air Force hoped to develop and improve through this program, we reviewed existing literature on cross-cultural job performance and discussed cross-cultural training needs with various Air Force personnel. We found that there is no clearly established description of the behaviors required to perform in a foreign country and that the opinions of Air Force personnel differ about what should be included in the training for such performance. Given these differences of opinion and the fact that no taxonomy covering all relevant aspects of cross-cultural performance had yet been established, RAND was given the goal of creating the taxonomy.
To accomplish this goal, we began with three main questions:

What is cross-cultural 1. performance, or behavior?
2. Which cross-cultural behaviors do Air Force members, or airmen, identify as important to their deployed jobs?
3. Do all airmen, regardless of job requirements, need the same type and/or amount of cross-cultural training?

We then developed a framework of 14 cross-cultural behavior categories that could be used to address these three main questions.

Nine of the 14 categories encompass behaviors that are considered enabling—i.e., they help facilitate a variety of day-to-day activities and are likely to be needed in a variety of jobs. These categories are foreign language skills; verbal and nonverbal communication; applying appropriate social etiquette; managing stress in an unfamiliar cultural setting; changing behavior to fit cultural context; gathering and interpreting observed information; applying regional knowledge; self-initiated learning; respecting cultural differences. The other five categories encompass behaviors that are considered goal oriented—i.e., they are associated with specific mission-related activities and are likely to be needed only by individuals working in certain Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSCs) or for certain job tasks. These categories are establishing authority; influencing others; negotiating with others; establishing credibility, trust, and respect; resolving conflict.

The importance of the 14 behavior categories for deployed performance was evaluated by surveying approximately 21,000 previously deployed airmen. The survey respondents generally rated enabling behaviors as more important than goal-oriented behaviors; they also rated skill in the language of the country of deployment as less important than half of the other categories. (See pp. 18–20.) We also examined the importance ratings within each AFSC and the differences across AFSCs. For example, Pilots tended to view the 14 behavior categories as unimportant to their deployed jobs, whereas Special Investigations, International Affairs/Foreign Area Office, and Security Forces personnel tended to have the opposite view. (See pp. 20–23.) Overall, the results show that at least some airmen view each category of cross-cultural behavior as important (see pp. 18–27), suggesting that the Air Force should include all 14 in a comprehensive training program. Based on the survey findings, we recommend three graduated levels of training in each of the categories. All airmen would receive a low level of training throughout their career and just prior to deployment. Airmen in AFSCs that indicated the 14 categories were, on average, moderately important would also receive medium-level, in-depth training. And airmen in AFSCs that rated certain categories highly important would also receive high-level—specialized, expert-level—training. (See pp. 20–23.)

Other suggestions for next steps in designing a comprehensive cross-cultural training program include evaluating existing Air Force cross-cultural training, designing new curricula to address the 14 behavior categories where necessary, developing assessment tools for measuring skills in the 14 categories, setting standards for cross-cultural performance expectations, and tracking the skills and training received. (See pp. 41–47.)

Read the > Full Report

Prompted by technology in the 21 st century, economic pressures are shrinking space, time, the variety of life styles, and cultural variation into a networked global society. Demands of globalization today continue to increase pressure on educators and educational leaders to change curriculum and learning in order to educate our children to become global citizens who preserve the variety and vitality of life. Leaders of educational multimedia design and applications have a special role in the shared leadership necessary for this change in education as emphasized by recent calls for cultural studies in instructional design (Rose, 2005).

There are many aspects of becoming a global citizen, and one of the most important areas of becoming a global citizen is an awareness and understanding of the variety and relevance of all cultures. In addition, there is an increasing need for intercultural competence to be able to survive in a networked global society. The issue of teaching and acquiring intercultural competence is becoming a major concern in schools, in teacher education (Leeman & Ledoux, 2003), and therefore in the preparation of future faculty and designers of multimedia enhanced curricula.

Interculturalized education requires critical understanding of connections among the each educator’s self, school, home, and culture, and it has to deal with sociopolitical realities about ethnic and cultural diversity within society and schools (Nieto, 2000). Thus, in order to prepare the next generation to be confident in diverse cultures, educators need to gain intercultural competencies that will allow them to be actively involved in preparation of interculturalized curricula and teaching. Moreover, the design and application of technology to support and model intercultural education becomes a critical issue in the increasingly digitized society of the 21st century.

Download: PDF Ebook Intercultural Competence for Future Leaders of Educational Technology And Its Evaluation

Assuming things about other cultures before knowing the information is one way to develop misunderstanding. Learn how to improve intercultural sensitivity from a professional speaker and communications instructor in this free education video.

By: Tracy Goodwin

Going global requires learning leaders to grapple with thorny issues, such as the role of local context in content development, solutions to language barriers and finding the right balance between centralized and decentralized learning.

We live in an age in which international boundaries are blurred and multinational corporations abound. The global nature of business dealings and an increasingly multicultural workforce have raised the need to globalize learning. As a result, learning leaders are contending with the sizeable task of standardizing programs across the world, while preserving cultural nuances that advance learning.

“We’re in an era of globalization, and we do have to take into account that corporations and organizations are global [and] that learning and cultural styles differ,” said Charlene Solomon, executive vice president of RW3 LLC, an online cultural information resource.

“While you’re broadening the reach of the learning solutions, you also have to pay very careful attention to the way that people learn,” she said.

Building Cultural Competence

Given the fact that learning styles vary from one culture to another, the ability to leverage learning programs in culturally relevant contexts is key.

“The challenge is: How do you take a curriculum and ensure that it’s developed in a way that’s sensitive culturally to your audience? It’s another layer of issues that the instructor has to be aware of,” Solomon said. “Learning professionals [must] take into account cultural issues at the same time as they think about what type of learner they’re approaching: visual, oral or kinesthetic learners.”

Americans approach learning in a vastly different way than, say, people from Asia, Europe or Africa would. From kindergarten, Americans are taught to stand up in front of a group, make a presentation (a la show-and-tell) and field questions from their classmates. This learning approach is subsequently carried over into college forums and beyond, where lively discussions and questioning is the norm.

“One of the ways [Americans] stand out as good students in school is to raise [their] hand and question the teacher [to demonstrate their] understanding of the content,” Solomon said. “They’re very interactive learners.”

In contrast, learners from some Asian and African countries are comfortable with listening, but rarely challenge the instructor out of fear of appearing disrespectful.

“[It’s important to] adapt the teaching methodologies to the local culture, so if an American is going to [teach] a group of Asian learners, at the very least he will know what to expect,” Solomon explained.

These incongruent learning styles point to a fundamental need for cultural competence to be embedded in the learning function. “Building global cultural competence is becoming a critical business skill,” Solomon said. “[In the same way] you need to understand salary scales [and] compliance [issues] in human resources, understanding culture is as critical [when] interacting with others in the organization.”

Read more > Chief Learning Officer

We’ve all seen the adverts where the frightfully English chap puts his feet up, exposing his soles and offending the sensibilities of the local Thai people. Well, this is the real-life version: British businessmen have been meeting clients in India and – shock horror – kissing them, causing much offence in the process.

Now the UK-India Business Council has stepped in and ordered Britons to refrain from greeting people in India in this way. But MBA professors, who lead some of the most cosmopolitan cohorts in education, say that the key to multicultural cohesion is not tiptoeing around stereotypes: it’s just about being sensitive.

“We all try to point out quaint cultural differences, but that’s a bit trivial,” says Professor Arthur Francis, of Bradford School of Management. To smooth the transition of its foreign students, Bradford has produced a guide to cultural differences and how to embrace them. “What’s important is to remind ourselves that when certain behaviour seems odd to us it might just be a cultural difference and not rude. It’s just about being alive to these differences.”

But whether business school students are alive to it or not, differences can occur when highly diverse groups have to operate in the pressurised atmosphere of an MBA course. Each cohort must go through this so-called storming period, when students from different countries must understand why, and how, they must learn to work with each other.

Dr Marie Taillard, assistant professor in marketing at ESCP-EAP European School of Management is charged with sorting out the cultural differences when the MBA students form teams. She talks about the typical group, where the German woman will assume the lead, and quickly get frustrated that her female Italian colleague is always late, and her male French colleague simply wants to take her out for a drink.

“We try to explain that it’s nothing unusual to have these differences,” says Taillard. “It’s just part of working in an international business environment.” She urges her students to set down rules before beginning: that everyone will be on time, that everyone will have a voice, and that no one will leave a meeting without arranging to meet again. That’s the easy part.

“More difficult is where there are problems deciding who is the leader,” she says. “We’ll help them to choose a leader or a different model altogether, where someone takes the lead for two weeks, say. The worst case scenario is when they won’t talk, they’ve tried to ostracise someone they don’t like, and people are coming to me in tears saying they want to quit the programme altogether.”

Read more > The Independent

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Last week, Passport mentioned a cartographic error on Newsweek’s map “The State of Islam Around the Globe”: Rather than marking the Palestinian Territories (the West Bank and Gaza) it labeled Israel as such.

While this is a sure fumble, it is easily changed. More problematic is that the map only includes 15 “Muslim” countries, concentrated in the Middle East and Central Asia. Only Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines break the mold. But even still here, the Philippines cannot be called a “Muslim country” with a straight face. It’s population is barely 5% Muslim. The struggle in the southern part of the country raises the community’s profile, but this still does not make it a Muslim country and it is disappointing that the Philippines is included in the tally but countries such as, say, Malaysia, Sudan, Mali, Senegal, Tunisia, Gambia or Bangladesh are not. This paucity of valuable information is the most troubling part of the map, not that a small country, with a small number of people is mislabeled on a map that is easily corrected.

An international book festival in Dubai is facing the possibility of a mass walkout in its inaugural year with authors queuing up to protest against the censorship of a book that discusses homosexuality.

The Canadian novelist and former Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood sparked the controversy by pulling out of the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature after a fellow writer was blacklisted for offending “cultural sensitivities”.

The book at the centre of the latest storm is The Gulf Between Us, a romantic comedy by the English writer Geraldine Bedell which is set in a fictional Gulf emirate. It was due to be formally launched at the festival but has been withdrawn by the festival at the last minute because it features a gay relationship. Bedell commented: “Can you have a literary festival and ban books because they feature gay characters? Is that what being part of the contemporary literary scene means? The organisers claim to be looking for an exchange of ideas – but not, apparently, about sex or faith. That doesn’t leave literature an awful lot of scope.”

The festival director, Isobel Abulhoul, issued a statement in which she said: “I knew that her work could offend certain cultural sensitivities. I did not believe that it was in the festival’s long term interests to acquiesce to her publisher’s request to launch the book at the first festival of this nature in the Middle East.”

Read more > Dubai Book Festival

Kwintessential’s Comments:

The news story is one that has been brewing for a long time and is not the last of its kind we will read about. Dubai, and anyone who understands the region, knew that by trying to become a centre of world trade, commerce, art and sport that it has to bring in people from all over the world. This has resulted in a flood of expat labour as well as huge numbers of visitors/tourists. Naturally with foreign visitors come foreign ideas, beliefs, notions of acceptability and world views.

This row is a fine example of what happens when you invite the western literati to an event in a conservative Muslim Gulf state. Both sides have an issue here. Writers, in this case spearheaded by Atwood, see this as censorship against their freedom of ideas, freedom to pen whatever they like about whoever they like and basic freedom of expression. Muslims see this as an an unwanted element that can not be encouraged. It is however unfortunate for the event organisers that by banning the book they have drawn more attention to it.

In short, both sides have something to learn. The writers need to appreciate Dubai is a Muslim country with strict ideas, some of which have absolutely no flexibility. There must be some senstivity towards this in that a respect needs to be show for another’s way of life, beliefs and faith. Emiratis can not be expected to roll over and accept whatever is thrown at them in the name of modernity and freedom of speech. On the other hand, Dubai needs to assess how it will handle similar issues that arise in the future and think of alternative means to overcoming such bad publicity.

It has been 22 hours since the team has had any sleep, and the commander of the small four-man squad is just as tired as the rest of his men. In that time, his team has marched about 12.5 miles and encountered civilians several times. Every such encounter is fraught with potential danger. Now the team has finally reached its destination village. The commander breathes a sigh of relief when the local police chief courteously welcomes the team into his office.
His sense of relief goes away, though, when the chief asks him and his team to stack their weapons off to the side, where they would be out of quick reach if needed. Just as the commander is trying to figure out a polite way to decline, he hears a groan from somewhere in the back of the building. Is a prisoner being tortured?

The marching, the sleeplessness and the fatigue are all real, but the “village” is located in North Carolina, and all the “villagers” are soldiers in the U.S. Army, dressed up to play their roles. It’s all part of an elaborate 12-day “culmination exercise”—or CULEX, in Army terminology. The exercise is designed to test the skills of adaptive thinking and leadership of Special Operations Forces civil affairs and psychological operations personnel in the Army’s Reserve Command.

“Adaptive thinking is about cross-cultural communications,” says Maj. Eric Le Gloahec, a special projects officer at the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. “It’s not just problem-solving. It’s thinking outside the box.”

These out-of-the-box cross-cultural communications skills are crucial to civil affairs and psychological operations personnel, who will encounter Iraqi and Afghan civilians in real situations like the scenario described here. The civil affairs function deals with civilian populations wherever the Army is.

Read more > Workforce Management