Plain English Gets Harder In Global Era

The Wall Street Journal

Plain English Gets Harder In Global Era
By PHRED DVORAK
November 5, 2007; Page B1

Computer Sciences Corp., a U.S. technology consultancy with offices in 49 countries, last year made a peculiar request to the company that teaches English to its employees around the world. CSC wanted the company to give them lessons on detecting sarcasm. Bente Holm Skov, CSC's European director of learning, says even employees who understand their colleagues' English are often stumped by their senses of humor. One French worker took offense when a British colleague jokingly referred to a fellow Brit as "not too clever" on a conference call.

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Offshoring puts thousands of workers in places like India in regular contact with English-speaking colleagues and customers. U.S. and European multinationals also are promoting more senior managers from growing markets like China, requiring the new leaders not only to speak English, but to inspire and persuade in the language as well. The resulting communication challenges can't be solved with longer vocabulary lists. Richard Taylor -- who headed learning at news and financial-information provider Reuters Group PLC, and now holds a similar post at agribusiness company Cargill Inc. -- says employees working in cross-border teams must clarify the meaning of everything from deadlines to common phrases, and can't assume nuances will be understood.

At Reuters, senior American programmers who told Thai colleagues that they would "like" something done by a certain date were often puzzled when it wasn't, says Mr. Taylor. The problem: the Thais had taken their colleagues' demand as a preference -- as in "I'd like some water," he says.
To avoid those troubles, Mr. Taylor taught Reuters managers to be explicit in instructions and watch for ambiguous phrases. He warned team leaders to specify that a meeting scheduled for 8 a.m., for instance, would start on time, not several minutes later. He also cautioned that employees from some cultures -- particularly in Asia -- might say "yes" even when they didn't really agree.

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GlobalEnglish, a Brisbane, Calif.-based company available only online to its 450 corporate customers, also is broadening its basic palette of business-English dialogues and exercises, in response to customer requests. It now offers samples of English spoken by people from 65 countries. Those samples help customers like Heyam Khalil, business-communications manager for Dubai-based Emirates Bank. She sought help for local trainees struggling to understand the accents of the bank's polyglot clientele. Most GlobalEnglish exercises feature American or British accents. But bank employees have to serve Egyptians who often pronounce "p's" as "b's," and Lebanese and Jordanians who tend to use a "z" sound instead of "th," Ms. Khalil says.

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American English is one of the most fluid languages (read: nonsensical) on the planet. We don't have words for half of the interesting things the world brings to us.

So who wouldn't have foreseen the problems resulting from the use of sarcasm in Ameri-English? First clue: corporations who thought people could bridge the language barriers seamlessly.

I'm sorry to say, I do not care that they (India) are having trouble. So sue me. :-)

on edit: correction

a person on the other end who understands me and I them, I cancel. It may take a few years, but it will be so satisfying to say to the c.c. person the reason I am giving up the account is due to outsourcing... My hard earned money paid back with interest being outsourced.... It makes me sick.