You are put in a situation where you have to manage someone thousands of miles away. You don't speak their language and you don't know their culture or attitudes. Every question you ask them is met with another question asking you what you meant exactly. What would you do?
I alluded to a valuable tool in class a couple of weeks back that helps translate some major languages. Check out the link and give it a shot for yourself.
Do you think it is helpful to write someone in their own language to better explain what it is exactly you require of them? Do you believe the technology is that much further ahead that will translate phone conversations as you are speaking over the phone?
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Managing someone thousands of miles away is not easy an easy task. As you mentioned, the language may be different and the culture will be if you are that far away. Being asked what you meant exactly may seem to get frustrating at times, but especially in this type of situation it is extremely important to ensure you are on the same page. Not only are there language barriers, but cultural ones as well. The language barriers may be easier to overcome than the cultural ones. Asking for clarification is essential.
ReplyDeleteI tried the tool you referred to. Knowing Spanish, I copied and pasted your post to see how it would translate. Unfortunately, had I not read your post before translating it, it would have made no sense to me. The sentence structure varies from language to language. What these tools do is translate the sentence word for word, but do not restructure the sentence. Many words can also have different meanings. It is funny to see how the meaning of the sentence can change when the translation used is not the appropriate one.
There are various translation tools that take the complete sentence into account in the translation rather than just translating the words, but they can be costly. And even those are not 100% accurate. Google Wave will translate as you write. I have not been able to try it out yet, but it will interesting to see.
Even though it may seem like a hassle sometimes, asking for clarification is the way to go.
It is difficult when you are working with someone in another country who speaks a different language. At my current job, and at my previous one, I've had to manage projects with others whose native languages were Mandarin, Hindi, Polish or Spanish. Fortunately for me, they all spoke enough English that we could carry on a reasonable conversation -- not that everything always translated correctly. Often it required some additional explanation (I recall trying to explain "horizontal" and "vertical" to my colleagues in China.)
ReplyDeleteI've occasionally used the translation tool you refer to, but mostly for my own benefit. For example, I've used it to get the gist of an email that came in from a customer written in Polish. However, I have not relied on it for important communications. My finding was the same as Michael's -- that is, it translates words literally, but doesn't always get the structure or meaning correct. Unless I know the person on the receiving end well enough to know that they would not be offended by an awkwardly translated sentence, I relied instead on communicating as clearly as I could in English.
What I try to be very careful of is to avoid slang or sayings, and use short, simple sentences. And if I have to go out of my way to explain something, it is better than an offense or misunderstanding.
I don't think that technology has mastered the art of online translation. I think it is still necessary to have a "human translator." I traveled to China for a summer during college and spent a week with my friend's dad who is the VP of Marketing. Although he learned several phrases in chinese to help 'seal the deal' we had a personal translator to assist with all conversations.
ReplyDeletemanaging people is hard enough and when there is a language barrier it makes it even harder. I think having an online tool to dictate what you would like to say over the internet is great, but I agree with Jessica that a face to face translator is still very necessary. We all know business is global and as we grow in our careers this could become a very important area for all of us.
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