Le business
When I taught English in Paris, a number of my students were employees of French companies that had been taken over by US conglomerates. They’d received the order to learn English or be gone.
The student I remember most was a man with a face and skinny like John Turturro. A walking, brow mopping bout of panic.
At the start of our first class, he told me that he had a month to speak fluent English or he’d lose his job. It soon became clear that he couldn’t form even the most basic sentence. Feeling like a cop ringing the doorbell with bad news, I told him it just wasn’t going to happen.
He broke into a sweat, and his voice kept catching as he hauled out pictures of his wife and kids, spreading them across the table, clawing at his tie and breathless with how much they all depended on him, this job, he’d been with the company for over ten years and… please, oh please. Do something!
At the end of the month, some company bosses were coming from the US to Paris to inspect their new acquisition. Every day, Mr. L. would come by for his class from 6 to 8, clutching print-outs of all the e-mails he’d received from head office: what do they want, what do they need, oh, God, I have to take them all out to dinner? Are you sure? O, putain…
I’d like to say that it all worked out. We tried everything: dialogues, memory games, books and cassettes, videos and interactive exercises on the computer… But his mind was such a tizzy of dread, that it couldn’t absorb a thing, couldn’t relax enough to let ze English in.
So mostly we ended up doing role playing games, getting him ready for the visit. And there were times when his confidence would begin to build, and the words would really start flowing…
‘Yeah, so hokay, hi ham proposing to you now that we hafter dat are restaurant heating, hand before den ha meeting will take.’
It was some time ago, and he’d slipped from my mind until I read this piece which began:
French employees will accuse a US multinational in court today of discrimination, claiming that they are being forced to speak English. [...]
“We think that employees should have the right to understand the instructions they’re given and to follow what is being said in meetings.”
The staff say it is not a question of national pride, but of discrimination. They claim that people have been denied promotion because they speak poor English, and that those who protest are accused of rejecting the company’s ethos.
There is a safety issue involved, they add, because the company makes medical x-ray equipment. “If the technician putting the equipment together doesn’t understand the instruction manual, which is in English, the results could be very dangerous,” Ms Chabart said.
The staff had seen a gradual shift to English in almost all the company documents since 1998. Orders for parts made by French suppliers were often sent in English, causing enormous problems when the suppliers could not understand them.
I can understand the imperative for workers in overseas subsidiaries to speak the language of head office well enough to read and send e-mails, talk on the phone and keep up at a meeting, but I do think it’s appalling that a company seeking to operate abroad does not make the effort of translating all of its forms and documents, thereby enabling its offshore employees to work at full efficiency in their native tongue on their home turf.
(If they have enough cash to buy a company, surely they have enough to hire a translator or two.)
I am certain that those in charge are fully aware of the imbalance of power they’ve created, and that it suits them just fine.
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Comment
- Now why would big US corporations want to further dip into their profits by making such sensible moves to help their employees, while creating good will in that community? Their elected leader doesn’t see fit to consider the nuances and sensibilities of the interanational arena.
Mind you, not that I’m bitter or anything.
— roggey Nov 24, 8:24pm # - It doesn’t surprise me. This is an arrogance that has been happening for centuries. I’m sure the Romans did it to countless cultures, the English did it in India, the US has done it [add country here, Mickey].
I’ll never forget walking along St Marks Square in Venice and seeing street vendors selling t-shirts with Mickey Mouse on a gondola.
I just think we are bad at crossing cultures. Somewhere embedded in our psyche is the feeling that the culture we are “aquiring” is inferior to ours.
But we’ll eat their cuisine and watch their films and wear their fashion and borrow parts of their language to make us appear more sophisticated.
Sorry, I think I am now ranting.
au revoir
— joe Nov 25, 12:25am # - From our sources (more than one) inside the EU/Brussels, quite alot of correspondence is done in English. Additionally, the new member states are preferring to do their biz in English. This particular American was stunned to hear of these things.
— Vaska Nov 25, 3:03pm # - I don’t know that “preferring” is exactly the word I’d use.
The hegemony of English has taken hold in most international organisations, and those who want to be heard/do business outside their borders have to be able to say and do so in English.
In a good many EC departments, it is no longer an option to submit a paper in any language other than English.
— gail Nov 26, 10:03am # - writing from your native canada to note, isn’t it always the powerful who create imbalances of power. our own pm martin i think will kill himself in his effort to balance his way through this term. i think he should be grateful and move on, one coronation was enough.
peace to you in Paris. this weekend i picked up Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories to go along with my copy of her Montreal Stories.
thrive!
O
— O Nov 27, 8:37pm # - I sympathize with your French student, but consider that this multinational company also operates in Hungary (I think I work for the company in question).
If my French colleague speaks no English, what should the Hungarians do? Should they speak French and English as well? I am one of the Hungarians, and actually I do speak both languages, but many of my coworkers don’t.
I believe that today a common language is mandatory. I do work on x-ray machines myself, and I can tell you that a single translation error could result in the death of the patient.
— balint Nov 28, 3:10pm # - Like Balint I sympathize with your student but what does he expect? English has been the language of business for the last fifty years, and the language of international business for at least 10 or so years (since the first non-English companies started to adopt English as their corporate language).
I’m working in China, for a Chinese company, and while I did take the time to learn Chinese I seldom use it save for coffee break conversations because everything I do is in English. Our supplies, both Chinese and international, do business in English.
It’s interesting that my Chinese co-workers seem to think that such a situation makes perfect sense—a lot of people speak English, not so many speak Chinese. They’re proud of their language just like the French, but maybe not so hidebound.
— John Nov 29, 3:46am # - Of course, as I said, with English having become the international language, employees who work outside their national borders need to have a fair grasp of it.
My contention was that there’s no justification for the parent company to be unwilling to have their business forms, in-house documents, etc. translated, thereby preventing non-native speakers from working at full efficiency.
(Not to mention a basic show of respect that would seem fundamental to employee relations.)
If a Hungarian company is working with a Hungarian supplier, it seems to me that misunderstandings would be reduced to a minimum if both parties were communicating in Hungarian.
— gail Nov 29, 11:04am #
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