Education and Science, EU – Baltic States, Forum, Latvia, Markets and Companies

At the business lunch «Languages mean business» in Warsaw. 29.09.2011.

Much has been done during this year. The initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Education and Culture was to conduct a survey of the best practice in the European exporting SMEs and to create a guide for promoting the greater use of languages and language management strategies implementation by the European companies in their international trade. 

“PIMLICO” survey of the best practice in the European exporting SMEs has been designed and completed, a guide book “The Language Guide for European Business – Successful communication in your international trade” has been published as a result of one year analysis, mutual cooperation and hard work between SMEs reps and the EC. 

This round table meeting, hold in Warsaw, on the 29^th of September 2011 was a check point both for the EC and SMEs. Another open dialogue took place and business representatives were willing to share their successful and less successful experience on international business relationship in the context of language and cultural awareness issues.

The statistics presented at the meeting sounded devastating:  there are 20 million SMEs in the EU and only 8% of them went across borders. According to the European Commission survey of exporting SMEs (ELAN, 2006), over one in ten declared they had lost a contract for lack of foreign languages.  There is no need to discuss the importance of knowing languages in developing a beneficial partnership with foreign companies. There is no need to mention that companies are losing millions for lack of foreign languages knowledge. And still this problem exists and prevents companies from being more successful and stirringly developing on the foreign markets. 

Within the bounds of the meeting some new concepts were highlighted by different participants in different contexts, but on one key idea: English is not enough to maintain and develop new business.  Fluency in English is now seen by business as a generic skill much like computing skills which people in business are assumed to possess. Although English remains the leading language in e-commerce, other languages such as Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese are becoming comparatively more important. Indeed, the growing interest of the European companies on the Chinese market shows that this region seems to be very promising and developing for both parties.  The Chinese market is very well protected by the Chinese legislation, other different kinds of barriers, one of which is a language barrier.

The pie chart shows the basic languages used in exporting over the last few years.  The English language remains dominant, but we can notice a prominent percentage of the German, French and Russian languages.

Languages used by SMEs for exporting

Languages still remain the key factors in establishing good, beneficial and professional relationships with customers. The quality of the company’s service depends on the quality of your knowledge of your customer’s language.  If you want to sell a product, you will be talking to your customer in his/her language. This formula was accepted and implied long ago. But the excellent language is still not enough to create positive, beneficial, comfortable and long-term relationships.  Cultural awareness and excellence in language is a beneficial blend of two key factors which positively influence any relationship between a supplier and customer.  Needless to mention - how crucial to know cultural peculiarities, traditions, customs of people you are going to establish business relationship with, especially doing business with partners from Asia, Africa or countries from other continents.  What is good at home can be harmful abroad.

Julia Surikova, Head of the Languages Research Department at M.A.R.I.D.I Ltd, Riga, Latvia:

- Our company is a software engineering company which creates, produces and sells languages learning software programs all over the world. From our experience we know that physical presence at a particular region is very beneficial for sales. Two years ago we started to establish a representative office in Beijing, China. The experience of entering a new market, not typical to any European market cost the company a fortune and gave us an important insight into the country and its ways of doing business.

It was extremely difficult for our staff to get started in China as we were divided by the language barrier. So our company chose one of the language management strategies and hired a person who graduated from the Chinese language faculty in Latvia.  The way things went immediately after this person went to live in Beijing was amazing both for the company and our Chinese partners. Knowing the language and taking into account the traditions opened many closed doors for us. 

We support the idea of either hiring local staff or fluent speaking people, even those who may be less prepared professionally and need to be trained.  It is not solely the question of language fluency, it is also a question of knowing what is it behind the words, traditions and cultural heritage.  We benefited from employing a person fluent in Chinese and did our best to equip this intern with professional knowledge which she invested later into the company’s development and growth in China.  We believe it is essential to implement some of the language management strategies in order to strive on the international market.  We chose several, such as: creation of especially culturally and linguistically adapted website, which is the first thing that our potential customer investigates.

While leading negotiations our company hired professional interpreters who had been introduced with the company’s products peculiarities and policies in advance.  The interpreters were well prepared with the content of the future meetings and could rely on the language knowledge, as well as on the subject knowledge.  Needless to say, that all the documentations, marketing materials, website content were translated into Chinese by professional translators. The company did a complete product and packaging adaptation in line with local tastes and customs.  Management of people and presentation of the company to customers are two key factors of the language management strategies.  Dealing right with both of them lays the foundation for successful international trade. 

Working abroad on new markets is not only valuable and adventurous experience; it is also a great challenge, which is sometimes difficult to meet, but when meeting it, it turns out to be very rewarding.  Learning something new about other cultures, languages and life styles enriches your inner self, makes you feel more complete and you feel like being part of a small world!  We still believe that human relationship based on good communication makes business developing and the world go round.  Being able to communicate with your customers is a great investment into the company’s future.  We believe that languages have incredible power to bring people together to do successful business, to develop industries, to improve level of our life.  Languages unite and languages mean business!