As noted at the beginning of this chapter, as well as having internal cultures and sometimes sub-cultures, businesses and industries also have a set of external relation- ships with other groups at national and international levels. These require careful management, and depend, more than anything else, on effective communication. At the most basic level, this means being able to speak the language. English is the mother tongue of only 5 per cent of the world’s population, yet Gary Ferraro notes that many Westerners enter the international business arena without studying languages at all. A study of US firms reveals that only 31 per cent considered foreign languages necessary, and only 20 per cent of them required their employees overseas to know the local language:
International business firms require effective communication at a number of levels. A company must communicate with its work force, customers, suppliers,
with people who do not speak English and who have different attitudes, ideas, assumptions, perceptions, and ways of doing things, one’s chances for mis- communication increase enormously. (Ferraro 1998: 98)
Ferraro offers several well-known instances of mis-translation:
In Flemish, General Motors ‘body by Fisher’ became ‘Corpse By Fisher’.
In Chinese, Pepsi-Cola’s slogan ‘Come Alive With Pepsi’ became ‘Pepsi will bring
your ancestors back from the grave’.
In Brazil, a US Airline promised plush ‘rendezvous lounges’ in its first class
sections without realizing that, in Portuguese, this implies a room for making love.
When an American chicken entrepreneur translated a slogan into Spanish, ‘It
takes a tough man to make a tender chicken’ became ‘It takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate’.
The list continues: cigarettes with low tar have been advertised as having ‘asphalt’; computers have acquired ‘underwear’ instead of ‘software’; and a hydraulic ram has been listed in an engineering manual as a ‘wet sheep’ (Ferraro 1998)
While entertaining, these mis-translations also serve to underline Ferraro’s point that language is the doorway to understanding culture, beliefs and values – to getting to grips with a different worldview:
If international business people are to be successful, there is no substitute for an intimate acquaintance with both the language and the culture of those with whom they are conducting business. Because of the close relationship between language and culture, it is almost impossible not to learn about one while studying the other. (Ferraro 1998: 98)
Language is of course not just a matter of words. It reveals basic cultural dyn- amics, showing, for example, how cultural groups think about the importance of the individual versus the importance of groups; how they value (or don’t value) open disagreement; how formal or informal, hierarchical or non-hierarchical they are. There are different ways of saying ‘no’; different uses and meanings of silence. Much communication is non-verbal, and what can seem friendly and open in one culture may be seen as aggressive and disrespectful in another.
When I was preparing to go and do my doctoral fieldwork with an Australian Aboriginal community, I read a short text by John Von Sturmer, called ‘Talking With Aborigines’ (1981) which outlined some of the cultural conventions that I would meet in the field: the need not to march up to people or their camps directly, but to approach them elliptically; the need to use kin terms rather than personal
names; the convention that when people die their names are not spoken for some time. There are also more subtle issues about how different adoptive kin require different relationships: some involve ‘joking’ relationships, some are more formal; some require strict avoidance; some involve social and economic responsibilities. The use of silence in Aboriginal communities is complex, and cannot be taken to mean agreement at all. Such preparation, and lengthy fieldwork, is essential to an understanding of local beliefs and values and ways of understanding the world.
In order to work effectively all anthropologists have to do this kind of thing and, as a result, they are well equipped to assist others in coming at least part of the way down the same road. Although people ‘doing business’ may not need the depth of cultural understanding and engagement that ethnographic fieldwork requires, it is certainly helpful for them to have some idea about the cultural norms that prevail in the communities with whom they are involved. There is thus a very useful role for anthropologists in assisting them in this regard. As Richard Reeves-Ellington (2003: 247) says: ‘Business people who are more culturally aware are also more successful.’ He designed and implemented a cross-cultural training programme for an American company that was doing business in Japan. About 50 employees participated in this and the long-term results were impressive. ‘Project managers who took the cultural training program were able to cut project completion time nearly in half and increase the financial returns from the projects threefold’ (Reeves-Ellington 2003).
In essence, Reeves-Ellington teaches business-people to use the basic methods developed by anthropologists to describe and analyse cultural settings. He enables them to think about the way that things are classified in a particular cultural space; to discern local principles for behaviour; and to consider the values that drive these. He encourages them to think about the ‘cultural logic’ that they encounter – how do people engage with their environment? What do they consider to be truth and reality? What is their view of human nature? How do they approach relationships and define the purpose of activities? How do they use their time?
He gives his trainees a lot of information about the values and behavioural rituals implicit in business interactions in Japan, for example explaining the formal rituals and ideas that surround business card exchange; the seating arrangements of tables for meetings; the kinds of conference practices that are expected, and the importance of reciprocity in ritual exchanges.
Cultural translation is equally helpful in enabling different groups to communicate across global networks. Thus Emily Martin’s (1996) work examines how scientists create a ‘global system’ of professional knowledge, and how non-scientists interpret this work and respond to it. Working in immunology research laboratories and clinical settings, Martin considered, in particular, how people make sense of medical images, using them to ‘imagine’ and respond to medical issues. Public understandings
defining how their products will be received and used, so these ethnographic insights have considerable potential to assist the design and presentation of information.