01/26/2007 - 01/27/2007

Fidelity Expands Cultural Competency Program

In response to the dramatic population growth among Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans in California, Fidelity National Financial (FNF), one of the nation's leading providers of title insurance, specialty insurance and claims management services, has announced plans to expand the company's Cultural Competency Training Program throughout the state of California.

The training program enables employees to better understand key demographics and traits of multicultural communities and to improve communications skills with multicultural customers.

Bad business etiquette- a daily horror story

Clean up your own messes. Be kind to those less fortunate. Don't pick your nose in public. You probably got advice like that from Mom years ago. Yet these basic principles of etiquette are flaunted, on a daily basis, by some of Canada's largest companies. And, according to experts, it's costing them customers and money.

For the past month, I've tracked my dealings with local and national companies that persistently tell me how important my business is to them. While some did just fine, I amassed a Dante-esque catalogue of technology hells. Call it bad design, call it arrogance or stupidity. I just call it bad business manners.

Wiltshire company speaks the language of international success

A Wiltshire-based IT company has cracked the secret of success when it comes to capturing data in almost any language and its impressive break into international markets is due in no small part to UK Trade & Investment's ( UKTI ) Passport to Export scheme.

Composite Data Solutions of Pewsey has developed a web- and pocket pc-based data collection, field management and reporting package called 'TeamHaven', which has been adopted by several multi-national companies already. The company's latest successes are in Japan thanks to a major contract signed with Nikkohren Inc. - a specialist retail field marketing agent for over 250 brands in Japan - and this partnership can be traced all the way back to UKTI's support under the Passport scheme.

European project to develop automatic learning and translation system

With the exploding demand for translations since enlargement, a new European project is developing a computer automatic translation system for the 23 official languages now spoken in the European Union.

The €2.5 million Euromatrix project is aiming to achieve a technological breakthrough in the field of computer automatic translation through the development of statistical translation techniques.

Word of the Day: overweening

overweening \oh-vur-WEE-ning\, adjective:
1. Overbearing; arrogant; presumptuous.
2. Excessive; immoderate; exaggerated.

In a story as old as the Greeks, overweening pride brought condign disaster. -- David Frum, How We Got Here

She was warring with her children, having pushed them away with her overweening possessiveness. -- James Fox, Five Sisters