The blogger Shel Israel recently interviewed a Nicole Simon from an emerging newsletter site about social media.

The interviewee is insistent that "as long as there isn't one big Babelfish, we will have to agree on one language," then repeatedly professes her ignorance about what is going on in social media markets outside of Germany and the U.S. Yet, somehow, she seems to expect her site will be able to comprehensively report on the news of social media in the world. She believes that by imposing one language upon the world, she will succeed at knocking down all of the silos that exist from language barriers. Good luck with that, I say.

UPS offers some great information for free at its site on marketing to Chinese consumers. Their reports and surveys will tell you what Chinese consumers are buying and preferring in the here and now.

Lauren Nemec of Translatus offers a comprehensive overview for the do's and don't's of international business card etiquette. A must read for anyone doing business globally.

This is a blog entry that notes how the U.S. could see its future generations fall further behind the rest of the world when it comes to doing business. Killing international studies initiatives because they are un-American may have caused little harm a hundred or even fifty years ago. But, our kids can't compete in tomorrow's business world (which will be totally global, no exceptions to the rule) if they are completely ignorant of it.

This article looks at doing business with Chinese nationals from the African perspective, and offers some insights for how Chinese business culture differs from the European way of doing business. While it contains some generalizations that are unlikely to hold up under more rigorous scrutiny, it does give a good overview for how and why the two cultures differ, and could be of assistance to you if you are considering doing business in China or with Chinese nationals.

Overview

For the next few months, McElroy will be running a series of articles that highlight some of the characteristics of top languages used in doing business globally. This month, we look at German, in an interview conducted with McElroy Translator Gerhard Preisser.

What are some pitfalls to avoid, specific to this language, a client should be aware of when translating into this language?

First off, a general observation: A good German translation of an English source text is not only a product of good linguistic skills in both languages on the part of the translator; it also depends to a smaller or greater extent on the content, specifically the degree to which a given text is steeped in cultural/societal idiosyncrasies. English texts that draw heavily on concepts or experiences that are foreign to the intended German reader will require more than a translation to have the same impact they possess in English. Some examples: Advertising material with liberal baseball analogies, biographical texts highlighting school and university degrees commonly offered only in the US, product literature highlighting devices mostly unknown in Germany (such as a food disposal).

Some comments about technical documents (such as user manuals):

• Clients should be aware that lengthy introductions common to US publications, expressing gratitude and appreciation for the customer for having bought a specific product, are considered somewhat ingratiating; a simple “we’re happy you bought our widget” will suffice perfectly.
• Technical documents produced in the US sometimes tend to be quite personal in tone—this does not translate well into German and should be avoided (no need to say “please”).
• Warranty information should reflect EU or German conventions and legal requirements; it is pointless to have finer legal points such as those regulating commerce between US states translated.
• Toll-free phone customer service phone numbers are of no special help to potential callers from abroad.
• Advising users of any given product to use non-metric tools (e.g. a “3/8 inch socket”) to manipulate non-metric devices/fasteners is rather pointless.

What are characteristics of this language that are unique or different from English and/or other languages?

1. Unlike English, German is a highly declensional language, based on a system of a multitude of inflections and cases. For each word in each word class—noun, verb or adjective—there is a substantial set of possible inflections. This makes stemming considerably more complicated compared to English.
2. It is possible in German to build compounds by joining two or more words, e.g. “Haustür” (front door) or “Schulbusfahrer” (school bus driver). In theory, any number of combinations—noun+noun, adjective+adjective, adjective+noun, adjective+verb, verb+noun, etc.—is conceivable. A popular example is the word “Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän”—captain commanding a steamboat on the [river] Danube.

How do these characteristics make it important to use properly qualified, professional translators?

Given the complex system of endings, it is not surprising that even native speakers of German with an average education occasionally get it wrong. Infamous trouble spots are the weak vs. strong declension of adjectives, correct endings of adjectives following certain indefinite numerals, verb forms in the subjunctive I, and strong vs. weak past participle forms of verbs. Yet mistakes of this sort, while relatively common, DO get noticed by discerning readers and anyone who thinks they have an above average grasp of the language (i.e. the vast majority of Germans holding post high school degrees), and they do cause irritation. Professional translators can be trusted to avoid such errors.

While declension and conjugation follow precisely and comprehensively defined rules, the issue of word building through compounding is by nature a bit more intuitive. Compounds lend themselves to the formation of perfectly acceptable neologisms; a police car is a “Polizeiauto,” the moon vehicle a “Mondauto,” and should there ever be a car made to ride on the surface of Venus, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be called a “Venusauto.” Compounds enlarge the available vocabulary almost endlessly, and I can think of dozens of perfectly legitimate compounds one won’t find in most dictionaries. Forming a compound, however, is not always as easy as taking one adjective/noun/verb and simply adding another adjective/noun/verb. Many require linking letters—such as s, es or er—and depending on the letter(s) chosen, the very same compound word may take on a different meaning: “Kinderkopf” is a child’s head, “Kindskopf” a childish person; “Geschichtenbuch” is a story book, “Geschichtsbuch” a history book.

The creation of compounds that make sense and are formed correctly is difficult to learn by a non-native speaker of German and, since compounds cannot always be verified by checking an available dictionary or glossary, a “finer point” of the language best left to experts.

Last year, several of us attended a team building workshop. We played a game called the “Amazing Maze.” Given 10 minutes to read, digest and question a set of very complicated rules we then had 40 minutes to complete a task. While the game might have seemed like nothing but fun mixed with a little frustration, McElroy got to know each other better as a team, and how we can come together to solve impromptu problems. A recent example of extreme teamwork in action arose last month, as all of Texas seemed to be flooded, and even the option of telecommuting seemed endlessly frustrated by the rain and other technical problems.

The NY Times has a great article on a Mexican cultural element that finds new meaning north of the border.

Musicians and scholars debate what qualifies as a corrido. To purists, Mr. Garcia’s immigration song, though sung in the style of a corrido and with instruments common to the form, does not make the cut.

“I believe somebody has to die,” said Juan Dies, an ethnomusicologist who is based in Chicago and is working with the center on the project. “But some people don’t feel that way.”

“The community defines what a corrido is, not a scholar from Chicago,” added Mr. Dies, who specializes in Mexican music. “It is, basically, a musical news story.”

I recently wrote about the last living language of pictographs, and speculated whether such communication would see a revival with the myriad of icons we use today on our computers and mobile devices. Indeed, it appears there is a business that aims to do just that--create a language of icons.

Zlango is made up of over 200 icons divided into intuitive and memorable categories. Words, concepts or feelings can be expressed by the different icons.

Korea's own Naver search tool relies on a formula that resembles Yahoo! Answers more than Google's stripped-down power-search interface. I can't help but draw an analogy between Wal-Mart's refusal to alter its box-store retail model for the Korean market, and Google's refusal to change its interface and indexing/search formulas for this market. Both have failed to capture Korean market share as they'd hoped because neither did a thorough job of researching the needs of Korean users/consumers.

Web users in one of the world's most-wired countries seldom "Google" anything - they "Naver" it. Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country.