Intercultural Communication and Translation News

 Neil in action at the recent International Horseback Archery Championships in Sokcho, Korea

A leading expert in language and cross cultural issues, Neil Payne of Kwintessential, is translating his skills in a new international arena by representing the UK in the first ever European Championship of Horse Archers taking place next week in Germany.

The event brings together horse archery enthusiasts from all over Europe and as far a field as Korea, Japan and Mongolia to compete, share information, network and build a strong international brand for the sport, the history of which goes back to Mongolian steppes and early warfare.

Somerset based Kwintessential is a main sponsor of the European Open Championship of Horse Archers with Neil Payne, managing director, acting as advisor for intercultural affairs.

Neil, chairman of the British Horseback Archery Association is a keen horseback archer and recently returned from participating in the 2008 World Championships in South Korea. He is thrilled that Horse Archery is being recognised now on a competitive European stage. 

Neil explains: “The European Open Championship is a real cross cultural event and I have been able to offer mine and Kwintessential’s specialisation in intercultural awareness training and translation to ensure clear communications in the organisation leading up to and during the Championship.

“Horseback archery is a highly exciting and thrilling participative and visual sport.  I am delighted to be actively involved both on and off the field to help ensure this first Championship is a resounding success.”                       

Horseback Archery is widely regarded an art, rather than a skill or merely a sport. Whereas horseback archers in Asian countries, e.g. Koreans, Mongolians and Japanese, have guarded their initial tradition well over centuries, Horseback Archery in Europe is a melting-pot of various techniques and styles, mainly influenced by the heritage of the ancient Hungarian tribes, the Turks, the Scythians, the Sarmathians and the Huns.  70 competitors are expected in Hummelhof, near Bamberg in Germany on the 6^th & 7^th September, to compete in the 2008 European Open Championship of Horse Archers.

Kwintessential is the South West’s  leading provider of cross cultural solutions for today’s businesses and organisations supplying bespoke intercultural training, translation and interpretation services. The company was set up in 2003 by Neil Payne to fill a gap in the market for tailored cross cultural solutions to help firms competently negotiate the “cross cultural” business to business minefield and provide cost effective training, translation and interpreting services.  As a well respected expert in language and cross cultural issues, Neil is regarded as an authoritative voice on topical cultural and language issues affecting business.

Few successful businesses are now mono-cultural in their make-up. Even if a business or organization is not dealing internationally the chances are that they employ people from foreign countries. At a higher level globalisation has meant companies are having to look further a field for new revenue streams, products, services, etc. This requires working and dealing with people from different cultures.

The leaders of today’s organisations and businesses need to be adept at managing people of different cultures. They need to be able to grasp the essence of each culture quickly, because culture is so important in shaping customer or employee behaviour. Leaders must also learn to shape culture (at least that in their own organisations) so that it is positive, and aligned with the direction the organization is taking.

For those looking to the subject and wanting some quick tips on how to improve their intercultural leadership qualities, the following simple tips can get you on your way.

1. Learn about the cultures of people that you work and interact with. Start from scratch and forget your assumptions and stereotypes. There are many free online resources.

2. Get a book about intercultural communication and learn about the subject from an academic level. Noted academics such as Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars and David Hall have all published books that will go a long way in unravelling the intricacies of cultural differences.

3. Take some formal training from intercultural experts. For very little outlay a day course can go a long way in helping you understand how culture impacts you and your work.

4. Try and attend events or occasions where you can submerge yourself in another culture. Use the opportunity to observe how people communicate and interact with one another. If you get the chance to travel abroad do the same when there.

5. Start listening and paying more attention when dealing with someone from another culture. You will be surprised how much you pick up by slowing down. Don’t jump to conclusions and think actions and behaviours through.

Read more >> Ten Tips for Intercultural Leadership 

The Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII’s fleet, may have sunk because of poor communication between its English officers and foreign crew members, researchers said on Friday.

The sinking of the 16th century warship is one of the biggest puzzles of British naval history, with many theories put forward to explain its sudden loss during a battle with French invaders in July 1545.

One leading theory says it sank after it dipped its side low in the water during a tight turn, allowing water to flood in through unsecured gun ports.

Now researchers have come up with a new explanation for the failure to close the covers: there was a crucial delay between the order being given by English-speaking officers and it being understood by foreign crew members.

New forensic tests on the teeth of 18 crewmen suggest up to 60 percent of the crew may not have been British. They were more likely to have come from warmer parts of southern Europe.

Read more >> Mary Rose 

Google does a decent job translating Web pages from other languages, but machine-based translation is still not good enough for when you need a truly accurate translation. A new service called the Google Translation Center looks like Google is making its machine-translation technologies available to human translators. If you have a document that needs translating, you can upload it and request a translator to work on it, according to the marketing information on the site. The service can accommodate both professional and volunteer translators, and will let them use Google’s automatic translation tools and dictionaries to do their work. This could make translations a lot easier to do because the machine translation tools could take a first pass at the documents, meaning the translator would just have to correct any mistakes instead of starting with a blank screen.

Read more >> Google

Switzerland will hold a referendum on whether to ban building any more minarets in the Alpine country, the government said on Tuesday.

A group of politicians from the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and Federal Democratic Union gathered more than 100,000 signatures to support the initiative, saying the minarets threaten law and order.

Switzerland has two minarets, in Zurich and Geneva, which would be unaffected by the vote. Neither issues a Moslem call to prayer.

“The Federal Chancellery checks of the signature list showed that of the total 114,137 signatures turned in, 113,540 are valid,” the government said in a statement.

The proposal has to be discussed by parliament before being put to a popular vote and the process could take several years.

The SVP previously ran an anti-immigration campaign featuring three white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag. The campaign was condemned as racist by rights groups and the United Nations.

Read more >> Switzerland 

He has witnessed great economic and social changes in Spain during the past three decades. However, Stan McDaniel believes that a lot remains to be done: opening up the field for entrepreneurs, increasing competitiveness among companies, improving the use of English as the language of business, and invoking a greater appreciation for the multicultural society of the future.

“Intercultural management is extremely important, and it´s not being emphasized at all. In a lot of European countries, cultural management is almost a core subject, which you can study in university training courses. We have a course here on intercultural management, which we do in Amsterdan every year. This is very useful in giving students a real sense of globalization and internationalization. In the Valencian Community, when someone wants to work abroad, or if a company has persons from different nationalities working in it, it is just assumed that things will eventually fall into place, everyone will work efficiently and there will be no problems. You´ll adapt, they will adapt. But there´s much more to it.

What these specialized courses help you do is take a look at your culture, and at other cultures, see how messages are exchanged, how confusion or misunderstanding can arise? it´s very difficult to work with a multicultural team. These courses train students to experience other cultures and see how people feel, how they think. It used to be expected that everyone adapt themselves to the dominant culture, but nowadays it´s changing. And in Spain, people need to be more aware of these changes. Generally Spanish people see this as unnecessary.

Languages are also very important. Everybody can´t learn every language, so it becomes important to be able to communicate using the language of business, which more and more is, of course, English. This needs to be seen as a multicultural asset, because most business people throughout the world conduct their business in English.
With the carreras de grado coming with the Bologna process, this will also start to change here in Spain and in Valencia. Intercultural communication, intercultural management, will become important skills. We have to go that way, because even today, some schools here have up to 80% immigrant children, and immigration will increase. Take Holland as an example: there are over 300 different cultures coexisting and working together in places like Amsterdam. This will be increasingly important if you want to be competitive in the business world.

In any given company there, you will have Dutch persons working with Indonesians, with Spaniards, with Africans, and here we have to help people become aware that this opportunity exists, and we have to professionalize ourselves to be able to take advantage of talent, no matter where it comes from. In Spain most people still aren´t aware of it yet. You have to be more tolerant and more prepared.”

Read more >> Stan Mc Daniel 

Most Britons do not like the sound of their own voices - and would like to sound like the Queen if given the chance to change the way they talk, a survey has shown.

And after the Queen’s, the accent most would like to have is Irish followed by Scottish.

Overall the Queen’s English is the most popular accent in Great Britain.

The poll of more than 2,000 Britons by voice-to-content company SpinVox revealed that 73% of people did not like the way their voices sounded.

SpinVox linguistic expert Tony Robinson said: “It seems Britain is being gripped by an epidemic of accent envy and accent self loathing.

“After decades where dialect diversity has been celebrated, the majority of Britons now aspire to received pronunciation - and to share the sound of their voice not only with The Queen but with celebrities like Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant.”

Read more >> The Queen 

Government policies aimed at encouraging innovation in manufacturing may be doomed to failure unless companies learn to take more risks, according to academic research.

An unpublished study of more than 700 manufacturers in 17 countries found no correlation between the degree of innovation at each company and the countries in which the specific companies were based.

The academics conclude that businesses’ corporate culture, driven by senior executives, is the key to success or failure, rather than external factors such as government policies in any particular nation. The countries covered in the study include the UK, US, Germany, India, Italy, China and Australia.

A strategy based on altering internal culture, the study says, is likely to “bear more fruit than one that relies on government to invest in or protect markets”. It says: “The appeal for government relief and intervention by firms [over such areas as financial support for product development] may well be a cover for cultural deficiencies in their organisations that they have hitherto overlooked.”

Read more >> The FT 

One of Google’s goals is to give people the information they want, wherever they are, in whatever language they speak, and through whatever device they’re using. A huge part of that goal is making their services available in as many languages as possible.

The efforts to make Google products available in as many languages as possible dates to 2001, when they started “Google in Your Language”, which lets volunteers translate and edit translations of Google products in their native languages.

As more and more users, advertisers, and partners interact with Google across the world, the need for local products has become even more obvious. In 2007, they undertook a company-wide initiative to increase the availability of their products in multiple languages. They picked the 40 languages read by over 98% of Internet users and got going, relying heavily on open source libraries such as ICU and other internationalization technologies to design products. Do you need web search in Chinese or AdWords online support in Spanish? Perhaps Google News in Hindi or Google Scholar in Korean? Not a problem.

Here’s a taste of how far they’ve come:

* 30 in 30: Today Google has more than 30 products in more than 30 languages, up from 5 products in 30 languages just a year ago.
* In 2004, they had 150 local-language versions of various products (e.g. a product local to the UK, not just the English-speaking world); today they’re at more than 1500.
* From January to March of 2008, they launched 256 local-language versions of various products, compared to 55 in the same period of 2007.
* They’ve upgraded to Unicode 5.1 to make sure that they can handle any characters people read or write in.

Creating a presence in one or more international markets requires a team of local service providers. They are your point people who can facilitate global trade, whatever the business process–finance, HR, legal, vendor sourcing and so on. Identifying the right LSPs for your business isn’t cheap or easy. But it is doable, especially if you follow these three proven guidelines:

1. Set your expectations correctly. That entails first identifying whether there’s a possible fit between what you need your business to accomplish and the opportunities and obstacles in a specific marketplace. The standard ways of conducting business–everything from putting together contracts to ensuring production quality–may be too frustrating for you in certain countries. In that case, investigate other markets, and don’t expect anything to be as straightforward as it is in the United States.

Once you’ve decided on a market you want to pursue, start looking for local representation. Folks at firms like Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and High Street Partners provide services that can help you connect with qualified locals in your country of choice.

Finally, tap into peer networks by joining trade associations, exhibiting at local trade fairs, and networking at conferences and seminars. You’ll meet entrepreneurs who’ve already gone through this, so you won’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Read more >> Going Local