Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Our offices close down as of tomorrow so we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for their kind support and feedback over 2009.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

Although the growth in expatriate assignments slowed significantly during 2007 and 2008, economic growth in newly industrialized countries is picking up in 2009. With increasing GDP-figures a growing number of expatriates are sought to fill managerial positions in developing economies. Despite the increased demand for expatriate employment, expatriate failure rates remain high and costly. Overall, financial costs of failed expatriate assignments have been estimated between $2 and $2.5 billion in recent research. Personal effects include for example reduced self-esteem, ego and reputation, which may affect careers. It has also been observed that employees who fail in an overseas assignment have more difficulty in adjusting to corporate structures when back at home.

Not surprisingly, expatriate selection practices have been critically reviewed during the last decades. Where leadership skills, technical competence and domestic track record were viewed as the prime selection criteria until the 1990s, senior executives in 2005 considered the ability to control emotions as more important than technical skills. Traditional selection criteria are now considered additional to softer selection criteria. The observation that technical training and current cross-cultural training programmes do not seem to address expatriate failure complicates matters. During the 1980s and 1990s it became obvious that expatriate maladjustment was a main cause of ineffective expatriate performance and premature returns.  Which additional skills and competencies are then required to make expatriation a success?
Firstly, several selection criteria are not related to individual skills but are of utmost relevance. Family suitably, opportunities for spouse employment, possible disruptions of the children’s education, for instance, will affect expatriate job satisfaction and the intent to complete the assignment. The Global Relocation Trends 2005 survey report found that for 67% of respondents family concerns were the dominant cause of premature return and that spouse/partner dissatisfaction was the number one reason for assignment failure.
Secondly, soft skills such as relation skills affect expatriate success significantly.
Agreeableness or non-judgementalism were, in a recent study, considered to be an important predictor of both adjustment and performance. Further, cross-cultural communication skills and personal characteristics in dealing with host country nationals have been found key variables. Noteworthy is that the relational ability of expatriates in regard to host country nationals has been found to support both interaction among expatriate and host country nationals and expatriate effectiveness. As well, relation skills are also important when adjusting to new cultures. A meta-analytic study of 8,474 expatriates in 66 studies concluded that cultural adjustment is “perhaps the strongest determinant of disengagement and withdrawal decisions (Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005, p.273).” A clear relationship between levels of adjustment and overall performance was established.
Lastly, group processes on the work floor play role that were previously unaccounted for. Individuals recognize that memberships of various groups get incorporated into the self-concept, therefore, these social identifications have important consequences for behavior. Group categorization was found to be negatively related to the provision of social support by host country nationals in recent research. Interaction between groups has a positive effect on group and work effectiveness, however, expatriates’ ethnocentric beliefs have been found to emphasize group differences resulting in various negative consequences. These negative consequences are related to intergroup behaviour and fall back on social identity and categorization processes. Therefore, appropriate expatriate selection processes should emphasize non-ethnocentric traits and soft skills in expatriates next to additional harder selection criteria. A ‘misfit’ will likely affect the expatriate’s adjustment process as well as the psychological wellbeing of expatriates.
Cross-cultural training could provide potential expatriates access to the evaluations of their strengths and weaknesses in acculturation-related skills in order to focus training on skills that need development. However, not all skills and traits are ‘trainable.’  Appropriate expatriate selection procedures focusing on the right balance of soft/hard skills and non–ethnocentric traits may prevent future expatriate failure. The potential valuable input in cross-cultural training of the host country employees in identifying specific work interaction demands could assist expatriates in making the required transition. Expatriates do not act in a vacuum; the interaction in a social web strongly impacts on their adjustment and wellbeing. Appropriate attention to strategies that enhance positive interaction at the workplace therefore seems desirable.

Dr. B.J.L. van den Anker received his PhD in Business and Management from the International Graduate School of Business of the University of South Australia. Dr. van den Anker hails from the Netherlands and has extensive experience living and working in SE Asia. His (I)HRM and cross-cultural consultancy assignments focus primarily on western-Asian contexts. He can be contacted at ben@vdanker.com.

One of India’s highest courts has banned foreign law firms from all forms of practice in India, a major victory for a trade group of Indian lawyers and a defeat for firms that opened liaison offices in India during a brief window in the 1990s.

Representatives of the three firms immediately affected by the Bombay High Court ruling – Ashurst, White & Case and Chadbourne & Parke – have confirmed the nature of the decision and said they are reviewing its implications.

Only Ashurst still has an open liaison office in India, and the firm’s website specifies that the office does not provide legal advice. White & Case conducts much of its India practice from offices in Singapore.

The Bombay High Court’s ruling quashes the optimism some legal observers felt in May, when India’s voters re-elected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a proponent of liberalising the country’s economy. Foreign law firms have been banned in India since a 1995 high court ruling that closed the brief window during which the three firms named above opened their liaison offices.

Read more > India

The look is part of an exhibition, backed by Barbie creator Mattel, of the doll in multicultural outfits by Italian designer Eliana Lorena.

Two of the Barbies are wearing the burka, the loose fitting robe with veiled holes for the eyes which is worn by some Muslim women.

The collection of more than 500 Barbies is being sold at a Sotheby’s charity auction in Florence, Italy, in aid of Save The Children.

The sale is part of Barbie celebrations for her 50th anniversary this year.

Britain’s biggest Barbie collector Angela Ellis, 35, who owns more than 250 dolls, said: “I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them.

“I Know Barbie was something seen as bad before as an image for girls, but in actual fact the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be.

“I like the 70s, 80s and 90s ones that have reflected my life and I picked the really outstanding ones, the really different ones that have a message for my collection.

“I have a Barbie in a wheelchair that was only out for six weeks.”

Read more > Barbie

On Friday December 11th 2009, the Guardian Careers website is holding a live Q&A forum based around the topic of “Working in Translation and Interpretation”.

Recently, the Higher Education Funding Council for England surveyed graduates and their early careers and found the mean salary of language graduates 3.5 years after graduation is £26,823, ahead of that of graduates of engineering, mathematical sciences, physics and astronomy and chemistry.

To explore the sector in even more detail,  the forum will have a panel of experts joining the forum to talk about roles in translation and interpretation. These will include Kwintessential’s Neil Payne.

As well as questioning the panel on these careers in general,  this is also an opportunity to find out more about the organisations and workplaces these professionals are working in.

Fiona Harris is a staff translator with the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) – the translation service of the European Commission. She is currently on secondment to the DGT field office in London where she is involved in a range of initiatives to promote language learning in the UK and in raising awareness of opportunities for linguists within the European institutions. Following her postgraduate studies, Fiona worked as an associate lecturer in translation before setting up her own UK-based business specialising in medical and pharmaceutical translation. She is a long-standing member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Angeliki Petrits is a staff translator with the DGT of the European Commission. Since 1990, when she joined the European Commission as a Greek mother tongue translator with French, Italian and English, she has been involved in several language related projects including machine translation, and the European Masters in Translation project.

Frances Thomas is founder of France Thomas Translations. After graduating, Frances worked for the Financial Times as part of its in-house translation team for two years before moving on to Temple Translations, a London-based legal translation agency, as a staff translator for just under a year.  In September 2009, she went into business as a freelance translator, carrying out translations from French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese into English in various fields, including law, finance, business, tourism and marketing.

The Q&A forum will take place from 1pm — 4pm (UK time) on Friday 11 December 2009.

To visit the forum simply go to > Live Q&A

Imperial College London is running a distance learning course:

Translation Technology: Localisation e-Learning Course
11 January – 26 March 2010

Imperial College London is pleased to announce next run of a popular 11 weeks e-learning programme for professional translators. This is an exciting course on software and games localisation run in collaboration with the Humanities Department at the College.

This course will be valuable to anyone who wants to further their career in the translation industry, and is a very important stepping-stone to becoming a software localiser.

Topics include:
• Introduction to the key concepts of localisation
• Localising resource (software) files
• Localising help files (WinHelp and WebHelp)
• Screenshooting and localising graphics
• Localising games

Places on the course are limited therefore early booking is recommended.

For further details please visit our website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/cpd/localisation