Selling Worldwide

One thing to note is that English is rapidly becoming the language of business. In many countries, RFPs are written in English and proposals are accepted in English. (I recently saw an RFP from Bulgaria, and it was in English.) Business meetings are conducted in English, and senior managers in most countries are fluent in English. We are fortunate that it's our language because English speakers are notorious for not learning other languages.

I could flip your comment about Internet use on its head. It's remarkable that almost one half of Internet users browse in English, which for many is not their first language. As time goes by, however, Mandarin is likely to become an important language on the Internet.

I suspect that Mandarin will become more and more important in general. In Singapore, for example, where there are four official languages (Engish, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil), children in school were previously expected to speak English and one of the other three. Today, they are expected to speak English, Mandarin, and (optionally) one of the other two. The Singaporean government realizes how important it is to speak Chinese.

I am in Bogota (Colombia) right now. This is a Spanish-speaking country. I will be the only person attending business meetings who does not speak Spanish. However, because I do not, they will conduct the meetings in English. It's unfair, but it's the norm. There's never any complaint, and it's expected.

In some countries, but not many, I need a translator. This is always true in mainland China, sometimes in Russia, and sometimes (surprisingly) in Germany. In Vietnam, where English is the third language (after Vietnamese and French), the meeting was conducted in English without a second thought.

It's a nice touch to deliver materials in the local language; however, from my experience, most companies still use English. It's a matter of economics. If a customer can understand English, and the language of business is English, why spend the money to translate? I'm not saying that this argument is necessarily valid, but it's the one most frequently articulated.

In my opinion, the more personalized your business, the more valuable it is to translate material into the local language. It's not essential, but it's a nice touch (if you can afford it) - and it will become more important over time.

multilingual said:

Its no good saying 'I don't understand you, go away and learn English, then come back to buy something'. They just won't come back.

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I agree with you there. Also, you're right that the local language is more important in the B2C market.

Do you believe there's a place for programs that translate automatically from one language to another?

dagr said:

For translation work, the customer would have to speak another language to have the same level of input.

This 0% ability to evaluate the result causes lack of confidence further back up the process at the decision stage.

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I can appreciate your statements because I've witnessed the problem from the other side, having had to respond to customer documents translated from other languages into English. If the translator, usually a third party, is not familiar with the industry and industry terms, the translation can cause a lot of problems. The result can be statements not so different from Babel Fish.