Tootle With Vigour

Imagine being a smooth, well-heeled, high powered, executive vice-president of a multibillion-dollar company. You’re well organized and extremely good at what you do. You have excellent people skills and are genuine and likable and so people want to do business with, they practically beg to do business with you. Business falls into your lap you’re so good. You’re trusted and well liked by all the senior Presidents and CEOs and Partners and whoever.

So of course when the opportunity arises to fly to Japan to close an important deal, a make or break deal, the only candidate they even think of sending is you. And you don’t even bat an eyelid before accepting. You are after all, the deal closer. You’ve studied this deal in particular; you know it inside out, upside down and backwards. It should be no problem at all.

You pick up a Japanese phrase book and you learn some useful phrases such as, “Good day, it is very pleasant to meet you” and “Please don’t touch that bag, it has a very delicate laptop in it” and very importantly “I’ll try anything once except blowfish.” You pick up a couple of other words and phrases as you go; you figure you have learnt enough to get by, or at least not to be taken for a complete idiot tourist.

It starts well enough. A man holding a card with your name on it picks you up from the airport. He doesn’t talk to you on the way to the hotel. The staff at the hotel speak English. The man then drives you to your meeting where you use most of your Japanese phrases in greeting people and enquiring about their health. This impresses them very much and you feel all warm and fuzzy inside because you have put in more effort than the average white businessperson, you have beaten the stereotype.

And then it goes downhill. They continue to speak Japanese, very quickly. You don’t have a clue what is being said. Nodding and smiling politely will only get you so far and besides for all you know, they could already have started talking business and you could just have agreed to sell your company for a pittance. You manage to convey the fact that you do not in fact speak Japanese by virtue of your completely blank face. The disappointment is evident on all Japanese faces except for one who seems smug that the white person stereotype was upheld after all. The situation is somewhat ruined and lost beyond repair.

What should you have done beforehand to avoid the above scenario and to ensure success?

It seems so obvious, does it not? Arrange for an interpreter and if necessary, a translator as well. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Interpreters and translators do not exist solely for the use of international heads of state or delegates when visiting other countries to negotiate peace, or war. They do not only find employment at the UN or International meetings, busy with their headphones on, interpreting to hundreds. Translators do not work only with literature, transcribing the latest Harry Potter into Latin or Spanish or Russian.

There is a big demand for interpreters and translators in the corporate arena and that demand is being adequately met. There are several international translating companies that can be found on the Internet with a basic search. These companies cater for just about every language spoken on every continent on earth. Or so they claim. They cater for all occasions including business meetings, so the scenario painted above could easily have been avoided with a little foresight and a little arrangement.
If only everyone was aware of the availability of translators. Things like the following could be avoided, although, in truth, it would probably make the world a little poorer.

In a brochure for a car rental agency in Tokyo: When passengers of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigour.