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Thread: Importance of Foreign Language Fluency in Business

  1. #11
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    It isn't. We do have Spanish speaking employees and managers in our California plant, and can call on them when necessary, but it's very rarely necessary. Even when we do encounter someone who isn't necessarily fluent in English, they can manage enough to get their meaning and order requirements across. I like the idea of learning languages just because I like the idea of learning languages, but I don't think it's necessary for me as part of the business. We deal with international clients and I've never had an issue understanding them or making myself understood. English has pretty much become the universal language, at least for business transactions. Knowing another language would, of course, have more importance if I was living and working in a country where English was not the first language, but I'm not, so it doesn't.

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    So I'd like to flip the question. Is learning English important in business? I'd say yes. Especially IN the USA.

    I like to tell the story all the time about the kick ass Thai restaurant that used to be in my neighborhood. Seriously awesome food, fresh ingredients and reasonably priced. But ordering from them was so painful because no one who answered the phone spoke English well. It would take 10+ minutes or longer by the time you got through the credit card numbers. Many times I'd order from somewhere else just because it was easier.
    They also didn't have a system set up where your phone number would give them your address. It was a nightmare putting in an order

    They eventually closed. Since it was all take out I have to believe not being able to take orders efficiently was one of the biggest factors if not the only one.

    They cooked awesome food, but they dropped the ball when it came to running a business, and some English language skills may have saved them.

  3. #13

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    I know. If they don't speak english their accent is so strong you cannot understand them. I feel terrible for both parties when this happens. I would avoid the trouble as well, even if the food was delicious. As a decent person I would want to reach out to the owner to assist but you never know.

    I know a guy who sells Cummins marine engines down here. We have a strong asian population in the Bayou that are shrimpers. He said many occasions they will bring their child in to translate the deal of purchasing the engines. An 11 year old, brokering maybe a $25,000 deal.

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    This is coming from a perspective of working as a salesman for door 2 door and telemarketing companies.

    Is learning/being fluent in a foreign language important and vital to your business? No, most of the people I came across and talked to were fluent English speaking customers. But, every now in then are sales team would come across an only Spanish speaking person. Being the only bilingual sales rep in those situations I had complete ownership of those leads. It was nice and many of the other sales reps were jealous, but even with that advantage there were still other reps that would leave me in the dust. What I trying to say it doesn't matter how many languages you don't know, what matters is how much effort you put in what you do know.

  5. #15

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    I have to say that I am quite surprised by the overall sentiment in this thread! I feel like it actually is important to know foreign languages in business, but your comments made me think about it some more. Now I have to say, I am not so sure.

    I think it depends on many factors, like what industry you are in, whether your business is just a local one or whether you deal online, with foreign customers and/or suppliers and so on.

    In my experience, I have found it absolutely vital to know foreign languages in every venture I did. Even when you don't actually need the foreign language to communicate with the other person/client/customer/etc, it is often a great ice-breaker and a trust-building tool when you know the language, can use it to an extent and have a knowledge about the other country's culture. It can also prevent some misunderstandings (I wanted to give you one actual example out of many from my experience but it was just a huge wall of text to illustrate one point, so I decided against it ).

    But to be fair, all this probably doesn't apply if your business is just a car repair shop that deals with local people or similar. There might be times when some tourists need your help or something, but overall the knowledge of a foreign language won't be of much importance to you. (Unless you use it to source car parts from other countries, for example... Hmm.).

    However, the original question was, I believe, about the importance of language fluency. Now that I think is even more difficult to answer, but honestly, fluency in other languages is probably not important, unless you are a person responsible for writing content in that languge. In other circumstances, it's just important to be able to communicate and get your point across in the language, not to be absolutely fluent. And even then, lots of work can be done by general machine translators like Google Translate or specialized ones like YarakuZen for Asian languages. This makes it pretty easy to do simple deals around the globe.

    Afterall, you sometimes see even CEOs of huge corporations or their marketing folks that can't really be considered fluent in a language, but they still manage to get their point across, sometimes even in front of huge audiences.

    So, yeah. Take your pick. As I said, I am still thinking about this topic from time to time but all I can come up with is: it depends.
    Last edited by LostInIT; 09-27-2016 at 12:30 PM.

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