Language Advice To Ensure You Know What To Do When Visiting Other Countries

Businesses involved in international trade and those employing multilingual staff back home need to pay heed to language advice and cultural support to succeed respectively in their overseas endeavours and ensure harmony in the workplace.

Would you know what to do if your South African contacts invited you to a braai, how to charm your Japanese partners or settle a workplace dispute between migrant workers whose first language was not English?

The Regional Language Network works with businesses in the West Midlands to help them to overcome language and cultural barriers through offering language advice, signposting and access to free resources and language services.

If you don’t know what to do or say when visiting other countries or conversing with non-English speaking clients, the Regional Language Network offers a range of free language resources to help you get to grips with the language and culture of a variety of countries.

To enable you to forge strong business relationships and steer clear of cultural misunderstandings, the Regional Language Network provides cultural briefings on a range of countries including France, Brazil, Malaysia, China and Russia. These guides cover business culture, the basics of the language and information on the economy and geography of the country. Cultural matters are often overlooked as businesses focus first on learning the language, but understanding the differences in the local business culture and being able to demonstrate respect to your overseas contacts is just as important as showing off the basic phrases you have learned.

And it’s not only in international markets that problems may arise – cultural differences and language barriers in the workplace can stop your business from functioning effectively. Organisations like the RLN can help you deal with these issues through their language advice and support services.

If you have multilingual or migrant workers it is important to recognise the language barriers and cultural differences that will prevent effective communication. To ensure your workplace runs smoothy you will need to make sure, for example, that health and safety information is presented in the appropriate languages and that workers whose first language is not English or those who cannot understand it very well can access interpreters or mentors to assist them in work-related matters.

Looking to find the best Language Advice, then visit www.rln-westmidlands.com to find the best Information for you.