Described in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams as Probably the oddest thing in the Universe the Babel fish is a small, bright yellow fish, which can be placed in someone's ear in order for them to be able to hear any language translated into their first language.
This book was first published in 1979 but as Oscar Wilde says Nature imitates art and now Google Translate started in 2006 and from 2016 using Neural Machine Translation is helping remove language barriers. On holiday in Croatia I could point my phone’s camera at text on some obscure supermarket item and have it appear on my phone in English. And this is field is developing fast – see this article and this blog. In the future we will be able to wear a headset that will translate what someone is saying to us contemporaneously.
Yet for all of this we may be able to communicate between different languages but still not understand each other. Cultural and behavioural differences will still make negotiations and discussions involving people from different countries challenging. We may well hear and understand the language but still not appreciate the meaning. As the American economist Alan Greenspan said I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Siting round a table or on a Skype call with colleagues and competitors from different countries presents a whole new range of challenges, of which actual language barriers is just one. Here is a blog Negotiation across Cultures which discusses some of the issues citing examples like In the US, UK, and much of Europe, eye contact is a sign of strength and confidence. In places like South America, it’s a sign of trustworthiness. In Japan, however, prolonged eye contact can be deemed impolite. In the Arab world it’s uncomfortable and you would especially take care if working across genders.
See also this Harvard Law School blog Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations and the Importance of Communication in International Business Deals which suggests some strategies for handling cultural differences at the negotiation table.
One thing I have noticed by way of another example is that generally in the UK we are polite and let the other side speak when it is their turn. In some other European and Middle East countries everybody wants to have their say to the exclusion of everybody else so you cannot get a word in edgeways. One chairman of a European “industry wide” discussion I attended would only let people speak if they first put their hand up, like in kindergarten, but he did give everybody their turn.
An old African proverb says The stranger sees only what he knowsmeaning that when confronted with another culture in business we unconsciously primarily pay attention to those elements that are already familiar to us. If you go to Japan and travel on the transport system in Tokyo it is bewildering to navigate with a plethora of train and metro lines and few signs in English. However, if you stop expecting a relatively simple London underground plan or French metro map and start taking it at face value in the context of the geography of the city the Tokyo system starts to make sense.
As the American singer Beyoncé said Y'all are so cute and y'all talk so proper over here. I love England. Or perhaps more profoundly to quote Audre Lorde the American writerIt is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognise, accept and celebrate those differences.
This book was first published in 1979 but as Oscar Wilde says Nature imitates art and now Google Translate started in 2006 and from 2016 using Neural Machine Translation is helping remove language barriers. On holiday in Croatia I could point my phone’s camera at text on some obscure supermarket item and have it appear on my phone in English. And this is field is developing fast – see this article and this blog. In the future we will be able to wear a headset that will translate what someone is saying to us contemporaneously.
Yet for all of this we may be able to communicate between different languages but still not understand each other. Cultural and behavioural differences will still make negotiations and discussions involving people from different countries challenging. We may well hear and understand the language but still not appreciate the meaning. As the American economist Alan Greenspan said I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Siting round a table or on a Skype call with colleagues and competitors from different countries presents a whole new range of challenges, of which actual language barriers is just one. Here is a blog Negotiation across Cultures which discusses some of the issues citing examples like In the US, UK, and much of Europe, eye contact is a sign of strength and confidence. In places like South America, it’s a sign of trustworthiness. In Japan, however, prolonged eye contact can be deemed impolite. In the Arab world it’s uncomfortable and you would especially take care if working across genders.
See also this Harvard Law School blog Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations and the Importance of Communication in International Business Deals which suggests some strategies for handling cultural differences at the negotiation table.
One thing I have noticed by way of another example is that generally in the UK we are polite and let the other side speak when it is their turn. In some other European and Middle East countries everybody wants to have their say to the exclusion of everybody else so you cannot get a word in edgeways. One chairman of a European “industry wide” discussion I attended would only let people speak if they first put their hand up, like in kindergarten, but he did give everybody their turn.
An old African proverb says The stranger sees only what he knowsmeaning that when confronted with another culture in business we unconsciously primarily pay attention to those elements that are already familiar to us. If you go to Japan and travel on the transport system in Tokyo it is bewildering to navigate with a plethora of train and metro lines and few signs in English. However, if you stop expecting a relatively simple London underground plan or French metro map and start taking it at face value in the context of the geography of the city the Tokyo system starts to make sense.
As the American singer Beyoncé said Y'all are so cute and y'all talk so proper over here. I love England. Or perhaps more profoundly to quote Audre Lorde the American writerIt is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognise, accept and celebrate those differences.
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