Corporate Travellers are Frustrated

Good commerce requires good communication. Historically, the language barrier has always hampered rapid market growth potential between countries without the presence of a good interpreter. Using a skilled interpreter for trade negotiation is a practice recorded since the time of the ancient Egyptians (and one I’m sure has been in practice for much longer than that).

Today, everything moves faster. We can travel from one side of the globe to another relatively quickly and we communicate with anyone anywhere immediately via the internet. The art of Interpreting now needs to be just as quick and convenient because when it isn’t, there’s a lot at stake.

I’ll give you a scenario: Imagine a Chinese corporate traveller named Zhang Wei. I could’ve used any businessperson from any nation, but China currently has the biggest business travel market in the world, with an estimated total spend of nearly USD350 billion in 2017, so he seemed the best man for the job.

Zhang Wei has identified France as a potential market for his company’s Electronic Components, that could benefit numerous businesses in France. He has just landed at Charles de Gaulle and, like many of his countrymen, doesn’t speak a word of English, never mind French.

Corporate Travellers are Frustrated: Needing a linguistic soft place to land.

After disembarking the plane, collecting his luggage, making his way through immigration, and negotiating his way through CDG, Zhang begins to feel a familiar ache developing behind his temples and realises that he has left his prescription migraine pills at home. He already has his hotel destination written down to show his taxi driver his planned destination, but now he is unsure of how he is going to get the French airport pharmacist to help him get the pills he needs to function properly.

Corporate Travellers are Frustrated: From A to B without speaking E.

After half an hour of frustrating miscommunication followed by trawling the airport, Zhang eventually manages to find a French and Chinese-speaking flight attendant to help facilitate him getting his much-needed migraine medication. It may be a bit too late though. Approaching the exit, he hears a man yell “Taxi”, which he recognises and nods in agreement. The man helps him put his bag in the trunk. He shows the man his destination written down on the piece of paper that his PA prepared for him. It reads, “Holiday Inn – Gare de”. The driver shrugs and asks in French: “Holiday Inn – Gare de l'Est or Holiday Inn- Gare de Lyon Bastille?” Silently, Zhang curses his PA.

Corporate Travellers are Frustrated: Making a connection, not an exhibition of yourself.

Zhang Wei has survived his first night in Paris. The hotel staff were incredibly friendly but as accommodating as they were, he found it frustrating that he could not communicate the specific way he wanted his meal prepared. After breakfast the hotel concierge puts him in a taxi to take him to the International Conference on Information Integration and Computing Applications (ICIICA). Roaming around the stalls and exhibitors, Zhang wonders how he can present his incredible product and how to do so politely, short of placing an English booklet he’s brought along in front of someone and pointing at it - assuming of course that the individual can understand English.

Corporate Travellers are Frustrated: Getting it right in black and white.

Despite many language barriers, Zhang manages to find a prospective French client for whom Zhang’s components are an exact fit. The Frenchman (let’s call him Gerard) has a query about one of Zhang’s product descriptions. It will require some tricky explanation to put Gerard’s mind at ease about purchasing the products.

Corporate Travellers are Frustrated: Closing the deal instead of talks to a close.

After much gesticulation and a little help from Google translate, Gerard and Zhang manage to set up a meeting for the next morning at Zhang’s hotel. Next obstacle - getting the Front Desk Manager to understand that he needs to book a meeting room and a professional interpreter! He also wants to know if he can get a professional translation of his English pamphlet in to French before the following morning’s meeting. Zhang starts to feel another migraine coming on and, frustrated, uses some colourful language he knows nobody in the vicinity can understand.

Imagine your worst travel nightmare…now imagine you can’t speak the local language.

You would think that in this day and age, technology would come to the rescue, and to some extent it does. Unfortunately, Google translate has its limitations!

Now imagine that you could have instant access to a live interpreter directly from your smartphone. You would still be in a stressful situation, but at least you’d understand what was happening. It would have made Zhang Wei’s life so much easier and his business trip so much more productive - pleasurable even!

I have travelled to many foreign destinations for business, without any knowledge of the local language. Believe me when I say that I understand Zhang’s frustration. Until I downloaded whym on my smartphone. Now I always have access to someone with a mother-tongue speaker’s knowledge of the language and it has opened countless hitherto closed doors.

Not only do I have access to the language of the country I am in, I also have access to the language of any prospective client I may run into at a trade-show or conference. I can speak French in Taiwan and German in Milan and Japanese here in the UK. I can pre-book an interpreter for a specific meeting, and I can submit documents to be professionally translated overnight. whym has condensed the world to my own backyard and at the same time opened its borders to make me a truly cosmopolitan citizen of the world.

Don’t let your customers experience the frustration of not understanding and being understood. Add professional language services to the things you do for your travellers. Let's connect!