Question of Culture - Languages!

Another copy from my Facebook: --

I recently spoke about language needs with a person who works in a multinational company. He mentioned that although English was the official corporate language, and all employees in different countries spoke it, issues arose when non-native speakers communicated with each other.

The problem was not with special terminology, which everyone knew well, but rather with an incorrect tone of the message.A translator or an interpreter knows such cultural differences and takes them into account. But an increasing number of people communicates daily with each other in a non-native language. (All the worse when the communication is done mainly via email, where short sentences, typos and too many recipients on the cc: line add to the problem!)

Knowing the special terminology is essential, but not enough. This also means that companies need to think about testing the language skills of their employees, and about giving them language and cultural training. After all, a satisfied customer would expect to hear not just the right words, but the right message!

I think that we will see interesting developments in tools and services targeted to people who need to work in a language other than their native language - simply because this is a rapidly growing group. Obviously there are more and more non-native English speakers using English daily at work.

An interesting question is: what will happen in China and India? According to Wikipedia, India has 23 official languages (one of them is English), 800 spoken languages and 2000 dialects. In China, there are 6 to 12 main regional groups of Chinese, according to classification. A friend of mine said that China could choose English as their official langauge, just like in India. I am not quite so sure. With about 800 million Mandarin speakers, maybe we will all be learning Mandarin in the future.

Anyways, I checked the most popular blogs from Technorati, http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/. The top 30 "most linked to" blogs included 8 blogs in a language other than English. To me, this is just a reminder that there is a world outside English!