What does that even mean?

While meaningless marketing babble continues to flood into everyday English, another problem is being experienced in many foreign languages. A sprinkling of exotic terms from abroad (often, but not, always English) might seem cool (or easy) for the writer, but it can become a barrier to communication.

In the same way that Six Sigma analysis sometimes asks 'the five whys' to get to the root cause of a problem, we might as communication 'experts' ask ourselves 'but what does that actually mean?' - five times over, naturally. It would help us to root out pointless jargon put our point across more effectively.

And where foreign languages are concerned, it's useful to ask 'isn't there a word for that in our own language?' There probably is.

Keeping an open mind

We all have our own anecdotes about cultural stereotypes - think the HSBC campaign of a few years ago about a man at a Japanese dinner. But when I look back at my own experiences I wonder how much of them were down to the foibles of the individual rather than a representative cultural difference.

Friends have told me about Indian businesses keeping bad news from customers ‘for fear of worrying them, and Chinese giving them the jitters because they proffer minimal information in the run up to major events. Both would appear very different to a western textbook model of business communications.

Personally I’ve had Finnish customers who refused lunch as a waste of their time and Korean clients who had an uncanny awareness of where certain items were to be found in a facility that they had never visited in their lives. And then there are Japanese who are in the office at all hours … and Americans who are never at their desks when I telephone.

So what has it taught me? Nothing much … except to keep an open mind.

Spare a thought for the translator

Translators have one of the hardest jobs in the world - everyone feels free to criticise their work. For a while I freelanced for an Italian marketing agency in Pescara who paid me to take issue with translations they had commissioned, and presumably they used my reports to beat their supplier down on price. Perhaps I should have refused the work.

But who am I trying to kid? I think Raymond Rosenthal did the English-speaking world a great service by making the first translation of Primo Levi’s “Il sistema periodico” - The Periodic Table. If my memory serves me correctly, although works like “If this is a man” were well known, it took many years for a publisher (in this case Picador) to commission an edition for Anglophones.

Each chapter of the book was based on the name of an element and the events in the author’s life which that material brought to mind. I was so impressed that I wrote a book myself in which each chapter was based around an LP record and the mundane events in my own life that they still recall when I listen to them. It predates Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity - with which it shares the same unhealthy obsession for popular music - by several years. There the similarities end because Hornby published his book (and a number of others) sold the film rights and became, one imagines, immensely rich. Mine still resides as a Word file on CD.

But … and here’s the thing that struck me most when I finally read Levi’s book in its original language … I violently objected to the fact that Mr. Rosenthal had translated the perfectly polite term ‘sterco’ - manure or dung - as a four letter word. It even stopped me from recommending the book to English friends for a number of years. All that hard work, skill, knowledge, dedication … and I had to quibble over one word.

So last week I made a small act of reparation and recommended it to two people. I urge you to read it. There. That makes three.

Review of The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. E qualcosa anche per il lettore italiano.

Language skills - Use them or lose them

It’s never been easier to keep your hard-earned language skills alive - the Web offers access to masses of free content as well as enabling us to buy movies, books and the like as they come out. But if you think the social element is missing in all this, check out Meetup.

I was surprised to find (I shouldn’t be) two active Italian Meetup groups in my area (Greater Manchester, UK). The city centre group has a good mix of ‘real’ Italians and people like me who - as a friend cheekily puts it - like Dolmio. They get together once a month for a meal or a drink - and to bemoan the fact that you can’t get a decent cappuccino anywhere in the UK. Last thing I heard they were starting a reading group - which reminds me. I need to sign up to that.

Environmental coverage, Italian style

Following on from the two Spanish posts last week, here's how the project progressed in Italy. Thanks to the forging of strong relationships, the client looks forward to more high profile coverage later in the year.

The suitability of the technology for rural applications was this time supported by home-grown examples from the Italian mainland and islands.

From Russia with ...

Rapidly growing foreign language markets offer many opportunities but present a particular set of challenges and it's advisable to enlist help on the ground before choosing media.

In this case we were in touch with a reputable exhibition organiser who is partnered by the magazine 4EMEHT. Again the article was case study based and showed how new players in the Russian cement market could benefit from the experience of sector experts like the client.

Targeting a market in Spain (2)

Picking up from the 03.09.09 post, PR plan was rooted in the client’s marketing strategy (there are confidential aspects that I won‘t go into) but this overview is in the public domain: the world is experiencing an ever-increasing per capita requirement for water while at the same time uncompromised sources get scarcer and scarcer. Water reuse is the key to the puzzle and senior decision makers need reassurance of the efficiency, reliability and cost-effectiveness of the technology.

The big annual water event was coming up in Zaragoza and the client had taken a good stand. I arrived during the build up and walked to halls to find where the media would be. In those terms it was the best attended event I’ve seen for a long time. When the show opened the next day we (the client and I) were immediately in the halls making appointments with editors and journalists.

One by one, over the course of the next two days, we got them all back to the client stand for a briefing. We identified unique angles for each journalist and floated the idea of contributing major articles, doing interviews, commenting etc. We had staff from the local office on hand to translate where necessary - but it rarely was. In a face to face situation English was fine because in each case we graded our language to suit our visitor. And our discussions had context because we had all the exhibits and images on the stand to help us.

Sure, there was a lot of follow-up over the next few months. But there’s no doubt that we really cracked it during those two days in Spain.