'English Well Talking' and Other Ironic Business Claims

Few things are more ironic than signs that use poor grammar and spelling to proudly declare fluency in another language. For example, some U.S. business signs attempting to state "Spanish is spoken here" (se habla espanol), are misspelled as something like "se hablo espanol." Popular English examples include signs reportedly seen on a Majorcan shop entrance declaring, "English Well Talking" and "Here Speeching American."

Curious signs like these unintentionally demonstrate just how little the guilty parties know about their self-declared second languages. We condescendingly smirk and shake our heads at their blunders, believing that we would never make such an embarrassing mistake. Such blunders are surely rare occurrences limited to small, backward towns far from our corporate and professional worlds, right?

In reality, such mistakes occur frequently, but we usually look right through them....

Read the rest at "'English well talking' and other ironic business claims" by Adam Wooten in his International Business column on DeseretNews.com

Machine translation can bring blunders, successes in international business

In 2008, a Chinese restaurant displayed a bilingual sign above its storefront to accommodate English-speaking patrons. To save a few pennies in creating the sign, someone working for the restaurant skipped use of a professional human translation. Instead, the restaurateur typed the restaurant name into a machine translation program, which quickly returned some English text that was printed and placed above the business storefront without review. Unfortunately, the translation utility was not working that day. Because of the misfortune, Internet users worldwide have seen photos of the restaurant sign displaying the supposed English translation, Translate server error.

Public interest in machine translation is growing as the nature of business becomes increasingly international, translation technology continues to improve and Google makes news each time it adds machine translation features to another of its online applications. With increased interest comes increased optimism. However, it is important to question whether this optimism is based on reality or hype.

Consumers' optimism about machine translation often cools when they notice glaring errors in machine-translated communications. Some of these anecdotes are rather humorous, like the incident involving the Chinese restaurant sign....

Read the rest of the article, "Machine translation brings blunders, successes in international business" and the archives for the International Business column on DeseretNews.com.

New Column on International Business

Many lessons on international business can be learned through humor. "Some brands don't translate well," is my first article in a new weekly column on international business, language, culture... and translation too!

New articles for this International Business column should appear each week on Fridays in the "Business" section of DeseretNews.com.

The second article, "Avoid cultural blunders when working abroad," appeared today, and there is now a place to view International Business archives.

Please help support this new translation-related column by spreading the word via your blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more so the the column is not canceled due to lack of readership :-)

Avoid Cultural Blunders When Working Abroad

A friend of mine once said he wished he had known more about Brazil's cultural dos and don'ts before accepting an assignment to work there. While presenting to a group of his Brazilian peers, he repeatedly used a hand gesture that in the United States would emphasize everything was "OK." Unfortunately, in Brazil, this "OK" gesture has roughly the same vulgar meaning as the middle-finger gesture we all recognize in the United States.

Fortunately, most of the audience was forgiving, but my friend was still embarrassed and wished he had avoided the incident entirely.

My friend may take some small comfort in knowing he is certainly not the only one to have committed a cultural gaffe like this. Blunders bred from cultural and language differences happen again and again. In fact, even former president Richard Nixon once made news by flashing the same "OK" sign while disembarking a plane in Brazil....

As international workers and expatriates leave the United States, they may wish to gain some education on country-specific customs and business etiquette....

Read the rest at "Avoid cultural blunders when working abroad" by Adam Wooten in his International Business column on DeseretNews.com

Some Brand Names Don't Translate Well

Many global companies, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Intel and Microsoft, choose to use the same brand name in multiple countries.

This is not possible for every brand, but it can often be an advantage. Think of the degree to which a single brand name simplifies marketing and increases return on advertising investment. By comparison, how much more would one of these companies need to spend to achieve the same results with a different localized brand name in every market?

Proctor and Gamble likely understood the benefits of a single global brand nearly 70 years ago when it considered launching a new soap named "Dreck" in the United States. According to the book New Products Management by Charles Crawford, shortly before the company introduced the soap to U.S. consumers, it discovered "Dreck" sounded like German and Yiddish words for dirt, garbage, body waste and a four-letter expletive that can not be published here. Fortunately, because Proctor and Gamble did its homework, it had time to change the detergent name to "Dreft" and has since sold it successfully in the U.S. and many other countries....

Read the rest at "Some brand names don't translate well" by Adam Wooten in his International Business column on DeseretNews.com