Language Games

A brand of water called 'Schweppes Toilet Water', a sauce called 'arse', a drink called 'lesbian', etc.
Were the marketers drunk while searching for a brand name?
No, these are the results of poor research & thereby bad translations while introducing a product abroad. Although these mistakes may be received as funny, they have caused severe financial consequences. Complete marketing campaigns have been thrown over because of poor translations, resulting in thousands of dollars loss.
This demonstrates the increasing need for better translation services with cultural awareness in this globalizing world.

kwintessential is a service that besides demonstrating these problems also offers solutions for avoiding them.

Simon Buysse

Yes + Yes = No?

Businessmen shouldn't be too surprised when an arrangement with a foreigner is undone for no apparent reason.
Although such actions may be considered deceptive, many cultures are keen on being indirect. The Japanese for instance will agree with you in front a group and negotiate afterwards rather than disagreeing & thereby risking to harm the group harmony.
Does this mean that we can't trust a word the Japanese tell us? Not necessarily.
This indirectness can be percolated by observing non-verbal communication such as hand gestures and eye contact. After a bit of training you will perceive these gestures as if you were reading an open book.

Read the whole article here

Simon Buysse

Adjustment failures

Underestimating the business related effects of cross-cultural differences can be catastrophic and can set you back a few million dollars.
A model example of this is what happened to FedEx a while ago.
Because of the saturated domestic market they decided to expand their horizons and established many subsidiaries all over the world.
The centralized delivery system turned out to be inappropriate outside the USA and furthermore they failed to adapt to several cultural characteristics such as the preference of the Spaniards to work late. After a while FedEx had to close down over 100 European establishments with $ 1.2 billion in losses!

U can read more examples here

Simon Buysse

Cross-cultural business blunders

Did you know that 'Schweppes tonic water' means 'Schweppes Toilet water' in Italy or that the ad "Come Alive With Pepsi" is translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead."? Neither did the advertisers of Schweppes and Pepsi.
It is clear that when neglecting cross-cultural issues in areas as management, advertising or PR, these people may have to face damaging consequences. Definitely in these areas, where success of the products lays in the hands of the consumers acceptance. Luckily, as globalization is becoming more and more important, businesses pay more attention to these differences. Nowadays, there is already a great deal of information available to prevent these major blunders from happening.

Anyway, if you are feeling down and need a good laugh, the link below, can certainly cheer you up. It gives you quite some blunder examples of companies who weren't aware of the cultural differences.

'blunders'

Febe De Lille

Success of Trade Agreements

Globalization has made trade agreements a worldwide phenomenon. The success of those trade agreements depends among other things on the lack of differences in ethical attitudes between the participating countries. In this paper, the success of the NAFTA (= North-American Free Trade Agreement) was examined. Hofstede's Cultural Framework was used to compare Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. In addition to Hofstede's Framework, other cultural characteristics were used to give us a better view on the ethical behaviour of managers in those countries. The paper shows us that trade agreements can be successfull if the participating countries share their ethical attitudes.

Peter Depypere

BUSINESS ETHICS IN THE NAFTA COUNTRIES: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do"

We clearly can't deny the fact that there is a huge amount of cross-cultural differences in ethics. But should we give ourself the task to change the ethics in other, less developed countries? Can we have the arrogance to oblige people in India, who are coping with bribery, slavery, etc, to change their ethics because in our world saving minds, they are 'bad'. According to the proverb "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", we can't oblige people to change their ethics. Nevertheless, proverbs will not save the world.

Peter Depypere


Values in Tension: Ethics Away from Home

Will the 5 dimensions solve the problem?

Ever heard of the 5 cultural dimensions?
These dimensions, developed by Hofstede, focus on national culture. As the internationalization is increasing, more and more managers need to work together with people from different cultures. It's quite possible that those culture differences give rise to misunderstandings.
So after comparing the pros and cons, the international business people have intensively accepted this theory to avoid these misunderstandings. These 5 dimensions show what all cultures have in common, especially in the business sector.

However, do these dimensions solve the problem? Can they relate the cultural differences to different ethical attitudes? To find out you need to click on "read the paper". The result, after intensive reading, will definitely surprise you!

Febe De Lille

read the paper