Kwintessential's Blog

The recent retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson has seen thousands of words written on his management style and techniques. Many attributed his success to being a canny man manager, others his work ethic and others to his abilities as a cross cultural manager, i.e. having large numbers of foreign stars and being able to keep them all performing.

Even though the adult UK book market seems to be a little weary of translations, the launch of a new children’s book publisher that focuses on translated novels indicates the children’s book market is welcoming foreign books with open arms.

If it’s up to the new county councillor Chris Pain, translation services for foreign languages will be a thing of the past in Lincolnshire as he believes cutting the services of translators is a great way to cut back costs.

If there is one thing you can't call my employers at Kwintessential, it's that they aren't generous. As well as all the free information on the website, last month saw a guide to cultural awareness and now they have produced a fantastic guide on global SEO tips - again for free! Looking for tips on website marketing but with an international flavour? Read on...

Unfortunately within business, translations are often bottom of the priority list. Any good translation company will tell you stories of last minute panics by clients to get vast amounts of words translated as part of tenders, legal hearings or business meetings. A Chinese company almost paid the price for a similar attitude for a tender worth ten million - yes 10,000,000 - tablet PCs. 

If you have been following our blog you will know that I am over in Ghana developing our understanding of business in West Africa. As part of the trip we are involved in a UKTI - London Chamber of Commerce Trade Mission which stopped in Lagos, Nigeria and then onto Accra, Ghana, where we joined the group. The mission is being led by the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna.

During these past four days in Accra, we have often been asked what we make of Ghana – the culture, people, food, etc. It’s been an exciting and eye opening 4 days. Interestingly, one of the most surprising factors have been the traffic jams during rush hour and the extent to which these influence timeliness – we have experienced this ourselves on most days, so to avoid unnecessary frustrations, I have had to surrender to the traffic and simply go with the flow (and try not to inhale too many fumes!).

Novel translation. What do you picture? Chained doors? Publishers of Dan Brown’s Inferno have taken the concept of "top secret" to a whole new level -  11 of the novel’s translators were locked up in an Italian bunker to translate the latest product of Brown’s pen!

All week, in Ghana, we have reached out to a broad spectrum of successful  Ghanaian businessmen to help determine how they have managed to attain success.  Our meetings focused on hearing their experiences, their challenges, as well as their formula for breaking out of the crowd.

Based on my experiences of organising business meetings in Ghana, of which I wrote about in yesterday's blog post, I am going to elaborate on business etiquette in general, with the hope to give a few more insights, explanations and tips for doing business in Ghana.