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Business Writing For 2nd Language English Speakers
Posted By: Frances* on 7/3/2005 1:50 PM (CST) 1500 Points
Hello all

Suze (aka LittleWacky) and I would love your help. We are exploring the needs of ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers when writing in English for business.

We’d be interested in any views about:

1. The main problems ESL speakers encounter when writing for business in English.

2 Any ‘’cultural’’ discrepancies that occur. For example, some cultural groups may consider the tone of voice that occurs in standard US business writing somewhat brash.

3 Any typical ‘’blunders’’ you experience when reading something produced by an ESL speaker.

4 Any other interesting views and opinions.

Thanks
Frances

Posted by: Agnieszka Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 3:53 PM (CST)
I am an ESL writer. I consider myself to be well above average level (at least in my country) but still I am not sure when I write for business. My native language is Polish which means that:

- I have problems in using articles (never sure about proper use of the 'a' and 'the' things)

- little exposure to real spoken language means I am usually too formal (as in emails) and have an inclination to use words with Latin roots (usually there's something similar in Polish)

- it's sometimes hard to find the right word (you English speakers have way too many words to describe the same thing).

English and Polish have totally different semantic structures and that makes things even more difficult. As an example - when you write 'the' to indicate you mean an item specified beforehand, we usually need an adjective to make sure. Not to mention troubles in using perfect and continuous tenses - we have perfect and continuous VERBS (so we use different verbs for 'I'll go' and 'I am going', if that sounds weird).

You can see a real-life example of ESL writing at my website (see my profile). Quite curious about your impressions :) - please let me know if you see major blunders, of course.

Cultural discrepancies do exist of course. It works both ways - when I worked for a global corporation, any attempts to translate presentations and proposal templates into a local language led invariably to pure bullshit. And business cultures differ a lot. There's much more to it than being 'brash' or not; you use a different code to communicate in business world.

Hope that helps - feel free to ask for more details if needed
 
Posted by: Puru Gupta Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 4:21 PM (CST)
Frances,
Being from a country where we have English as a second language, but IS the business language (India), I can pitch in with some pertinent points -

Common Problems faced by ESL Speakers

(a) It is a common concern for most of the ESL Speakers - Circumlocution, verbose and not being precise in communicating the intended message. The message is not effectively put across, and so there is a problem of trying to pack in a lot of words to describe something specific.

(b) Line of of thought is not structured - which reflects in the writing skills as well

(c) The beginning is always a problem - Based on my limited experience, most of the replies that I have seen start with a justification or with accusations. The "diplomatic" content per se requires more furnishing.

Cultural Issues

(a) As such, based on the consumer Psyche, ESL speakers in Asia have "softer" communication techniques.

(b) There is a verbose padding around the main point, more in an appeasing tone - you would find this tone common in South Asia

(c) The vocabulary is limited, with a handful set of words used (this entails verbosity)

Experience

(a) Having interacted with clients from both US and UK, there is a difference in which the business writing is carried out - a variation between the countries also. The US approach is slightly bent towards being more "casual". The variation sometimes confuses the ESL speakers, vis-a-vis the semantics and the phonetics.

(b) Typical Blunders that I have faced comprises the "Signatures" of some of the ESL speakers, that stay disconnected with the message posted.
I have seen instances, whereas the ESL speaker used to complain against the recipient and raise concerns related to the delivarables or Deny certain Requests, but with a 'Thanks & Regards' appended at the bottom.

(c) Also, I have observed that Date placement has been consistently ambiguous in nature - something which, to my knowledge, is uncommon among the English Speakers!

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Puru
 
Posted by: adammjw Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 4:45 PM (CST)
Frances,

You have been given some pretty good examples.I'd say Agnieszka is right pointing out to some specific problems ESL writers& speakers may encounter.
In order to make it a bit more general I'd suggest more holistic approach to possible language touchpoints i.e.
- culture( like East-West),
- religion( Islam,budhism)
- inadequate vocational education(some ESL business writers have not mastered the domains they are writing about)
-insufficient immersion in English business language on 24/7 basis, hence they tend to be more formal than necessary
-native language specifities; depending on the language of origin,speakers and writers are vulnerable to blunders you would find inconceivable or extremely funny.
That said I would say that it will be very hard to specify all kinds of problems ESL writers& speakers find cumbersome unless a thorough research covering all above issues is carried out.You should also be well aware of the fact that in some cases ESL writers themselves have no way of figuring out what kinds of blunders they happen to make.

Rgds

Adam
 
Posted by: ASVP/ChrisB Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 5:08 PM (CST)
Many of the blunders mentioned above can be found in EFL examples as well as in ESL. It's as if a lack of emotional intelligence stunts our brain's language centres just like a lack of linguistic experience and practice.

You don't need to go far to find examples. Trawl through some of the student questions on KHE and you will find a few... (I don't want to identify any specifically).

English is a deeply complex and rich language. As are other languages, of course... But that language complexity provides many ways to trip up the unwary speaker or writer. And some of the wary ones, too.

Perhaps there is an opportunity for English speaking/writing experts to offer a sanitisation service to ESL users to fix any gaffes before they are released on an unsuspecting audience.

But I doubt even that would prevent the problem occurring. I've seen too many EFL users fail to communicate their messages clearly.

Perhaps a better mechanism might be to have multiple testing of an ESL piece to check the tone and construction achieves the writers intended objectives. But that would be slow and cumbersome.

I'm reminded of some of the brandname examples that defy understanding. Names like Pschitt! and Pocari Sweat, for example. What the???

Achieving uniformity and consistent standards seems an impossible task - although perhaps technology might one day embed this into the devices we use for communication.

Good luck with your quest here...

ChrisB
 
Posted by: KSA Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 5:28 PM (CST)
Frances,

My native language is English. I participate in forums with international memberships. One of those forums is focused on website reviews, and quite a few of the websites are written by ESL authors.

I wish I could come up with a specific example right now, but of course, I can't locate any. However, I know that the most frequent mistake I see in grammar is when the writer translates their language's idioms literally.

Lacking a real-life example, here's one from English into English! "We were close to closing the deal, then it blew up." An ESL writer might say: "then, the deal was detonated." They're taking what is perhaps a slang phrase in their language and translating it literally into English.

Hope you can see the issue, and that it is helpful.

Kathleen
 
Posted by: Frances* Author Response
7/3/2005 5:41 PM (CST)
Thanks for this first load of responses - Great!

There is too much here to remark on every response...I am finding them amazing. This is a favourite topic of mine and I love hearing everyone's perceptions... specially those first-hand from ESL speakers and writers.

A few of you talked about 'verbosity'. I find this is very common - in many countries who have adopted English as a business language (mine included). I wonder if it's a 'cultural' thing which results from needing to sound more 'gentle'. Or it may be just a nervousness to use English boldly, an attempt to say things in a lot of words because of the perception that a lot of words equals a lot of meaning... What do you think?

It made me smile when I read that English has too many words! I agree. You can call English 'rich', 'interesting', 'diverse', but I always quote a famous linguist who said 'English is a slut of a language' - going to bed with every other language under the sun, and picking up all sorts of bad habits and unnecessary words and constructions along the way!

Questions:
Puru, what exactly do you mean by the 'date format'?
Chris, I know EFL to stand for English as a foreign language? Is this the sense you were meaning?
Agniezka, I will send you an email in a day or two with some feedback on those pesky articles!
 
Posted by: mgoodman Accepted Answer
7/3/2005 7:39 PM (CST)
There's a company here in the US called "Communcation Fitness" (www.comfit.com), and they have particular expertise in both business communication and ESL. I've been working with them for more than 12 years now, and they've learned some interesting things that bear on this subject.

First, the difficulties with English are different for people whose native languages are different. Mandarin-speakers, for example, have different problems than Spanish-speakers. These differences are far more important in teaching ESL than any common problems.

At one point Communication Fitness had at least 12 different modules for speakers of different languages. Then they did something very clever. They created a diagnostic tool that could identify the specific problems of each individual and customize the program to focus on the specific needs of each person. What language they spoke (other than English) became unimportant because it was the PROBLEM in English that became the focus.

Second, business communication is truly a sub-set of communication skills in general. People who speak/write well in a non-business situation tend to be better business communicators than others. The key to business communication isn't so much the industry jargon but the ability to think clearly, focus on the objective, and organize the contents for easy reading and understanding.

I'm probably not doing a great job of summarizing the learning or addressing the question you have asked, but I found the Communication Fitness experience very enlightening myself.

If any of you want to experiment with Communication Fitness, contact me personally and I'll give you a trial subscription under my company name. I think you may enjoy this unique approach to improving communication skills. Check out their site first, though, to be sure it's something you want to spend time on: www.comfit.com .

(The principal at Communication Fitness is a client and friend, and he is the one who encouraged me to write my first solo book. He's also an accomplished author himself, with more than two dozen books on a wide range of topics.)
 
Posted by: sham Accepted Answer
7/4/2005 12:08 AM (CST)
frances,
being from a country where english is a business language, we have english as second language. the points you are raising are very pertinent and here are some of my observations.

1) to me to be perfect in any language, one should be able to think in that language instead of thinking in his/her mothertongue and translate the same to other language. it may seem strange but it is true. Many ESLs do the same thing and face lot of problems.
2) limited vocabulary and lack of knowledge of spellings and origin or word ( spellings depend on origin of word also as you know) because of which there will be lot of omistake
3) limited knowledge of grammer, therefore they tend to explain the things with lot of words than being crisp and clear
4) little exposure to real spoken language.
5) structuring of the content will be a problem
the quote you have pointed about english language is very apt the language has picked up words practically from all most all languages in the world which makes it all the more difficult to understand and to put it into practice.

hope this helps
 
Posted by: ASVP/ChrisB Accepted Answer
7/4/2005 1:36 AM (CST)
Frances

I used EFL as an abbreviation for English as a First Language - as distinct from Second. Sorry for any confusion.

In my experience there are many manglers of the language who cannot use the excuse that it's not their first language... They just aren't very particular with the one and only language they do have!

Written language usage forces people to crystallise a thought pattern and freeze it, immovably, on the page. In verbal usage they might meander on with "You know" and "so she goes, like" and so on. But when forced to live with one final version without the benefit of adjustment based on their perception of the listener's reception of their verbal meanderings, they are far too easily satisfied with their first attempt. Off-topic I know, sorry.

E2L users are more likely to form bad habits inherited from their teachers, or develop self-cultivated bad habits, without good quality feedback and gentle correction from people who may have a better understanding of the language.

I learned to use English by the seat of my pants, like most English kids did. Only when I learned Latin did I start to understand how it all worked. Somehow I needed Latin to enable me to see the whole tool-set for language, to be able to understand how to strip words down on the bench and reassemble them so they worked better together.

And then there's the rules. Like "Never end a sentence with a preposition"... As Winston Churchill once scribbled on a writer's draft speech "This is the sort of stuff, up with which I will not put!"

Perhaps some people are reluctant to constructively critique an ESL user's words because they don't want to discourage them. And because they feel they can't speak the non-English first language of that person, so how can they criticise their errors in ESL?

We all need to realise we can always improve.

Even first language users...

Cheers

ChrisB
 
Posted by: virago* Accepted Answer
7/4/2005 2:40 AM (CST)
Interesting topic Francis. You actually gave me some pointers when I first starting teaching business to ESL students in China. Thankyou for that.

I find many of the comments interesting and enlightening.

From my experience I have found many students who speak english even though they are from another culture find it difficult to adjust to different teaching and learning methods.

For example in China where rote learning, memorising and focusing on grammar rules etc focuses the students in the visual aspects of language and forget about the oral & listening communication which is so important. And when it comes to speaking they are unable to communicate then though they have a good vocab and grammar skills. There are still many older teachers in China who teach english but cannot speak it! Though this is changing it is alot better with the teachers under 30 now.

There are alot of cultural differences when it comes to China and the US which effect the translation and expression of the people from the different cultures. Sometimes I think it's such a big difference it's probably the most opposite in business cultures I have ever come across. These differences certainly effect fluency in communication. Verbosity is a big issue with Chinese students as their language is based on generalising their expressions about topics where US and other english cultures are direct in their language usage.

Confidence is one of the biggest problems I see with students. Being able to make mistakes and learning from them. For many students it's not like opening a book and learning it and then putting it away. Many times they have to repeat the exercise maybe two or three times to really get a good understanding. Most students put it into the 'too hard basket' and forget it.

There are many others besides this so if you want to know more please PM me for any specific information on Chinese learners.
 
Posted by: LittleWhacky Member Response
7/4/2005 9:38 AM (CST)
I'm absolutely fascinated by your replies - thank you all so much.

I'm sure Frances will agree with me that you have given us some very valuable information and ideas.

The subject is deeply complex and there are no simple answers, particularly when we're dealing with the sheer lunacy of the English language!

Where would we be without it, eh.

SUZE
 
Posted by: mgoodman Accepted Answer
7/4/2005 11:46 AM (CST)
A Southern belle got on an airplane and was seated next to a New England blue-blood. Almost as soon as she was seated the Southerner, in her deepest drawl, said, "So, honey, where y'all from?"

The New Englander looked at the belle and in her most proper diction and icy manner said, "Where I come from they teach us not to end our sentences with a preposition."

The Southern belle hesitated for just a second or two, then responded, "OK. Then where y'all from, bitch?"
 
Posted by: LittleWhacky Member Response
7/4/2005 2:02 PM (CST)
Brilliant, M.G.!!

Here are some more...but we mustn't let this thread degenerate into funnies only, OK?? (Source unknown)

The Rules of Writing

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
25. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
31. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

No wonder E2L speakers find English a little tricky at times.

SUZE
 
Posted by: virago* Accepted Answer
7/5/2005 1:28 AM (CST)
In China many of the students are confused with the past, present and future tenses. In comparison to Mandarin you only have past and present/future tenses. With future and present tenses similar.

For example using the present tense, 'I am going to the shop'. In translation to Mandarin (and then back again) you have 'Shop I go'.

Even the english majors I have seen still get it wrong sometimes.
 
Posted by: Mushfique Manzoor Accepted Answer
7/5/2005 2:53 AM (CST)
hi frances

great reponse from experts. my 2 cents, from Bangladesh, where English is the Business Language, the only country proud to have sacrificed lives to establish our mother tongue Bengali as the National Language...

MAIN PROBLEMS FACED BY ESL SPEAKERS AND TYPICAL BLUNDERS
1. the confusion of when to use present perfect tense and past indefinite tense, specially to describe a situatiuon where two activites occurred in past

2. subejct-verb agreement is another problem. i.e. most ESL speakers will write "The Prime Minister, along with her ministers, have visited the area". The correct verb would be HAS instead of have.

3. Most of the ESL speakers do a direct translation from their native language into English resulting in grammatically worong sentences. they do this becoz they first think the sentence in their native language and then translate into english. like Virago mentioned for Mandarin, every language has its own way of speaking which when translated directly ends up in wrong English.

4. i agree with Sham, that to be perfect in English the ESL speakers have to think in English to write correctly.

5. most ESL speakers have a problems in using appropriate articles and preposition.

6. ESL speakers find it difficult to use Idioms and Phrases properly.

7. the mix of British and American spelling in one single writing. you will see CENTRE and COLOR in the same piece of writing.

8. Little exposure to real spoken language

9. limited knowledge of vocabulary and grammer

CULTURAL DISCREPANCIES
1. while the word 'cousin' can refer to a male or female, in India, to refer to a male cousin they say "Cousin Brother" and similarly "Cousin Sister". Interestingly this cultural discrepancy is recognized by Oxford English Dictionary.

2. refer to point#7 the mix and confusion of which spelling standard, wither British or American, to be used. here in Bangladesh, some use British while some American.

hope that sheds some light...

just for information, the UN has declared 21st February of every year as the International Mother Language Day comemorating Bangladesh's language struggle. on 21st February 1952, hundreds of people, mostly students of Dhaka University, sacrficed thier lives in police firing when they protested the then Pakistan Govts' (as Bangladesh was part of Pakistan as East Pakistan) imposition of Urdu as National Language, whereby Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) was the largest province and we Bengalis were the majority populace of Pakistan. No other nation has sacrificed so much to have its mother tongue established.

Long Live Bangladesh!!
 
Posted by: StarsDie Accepted Answer
7/5/2005 5:52 PM (CST)
Hi Frances,

It is really an interesting topic to discuss, especially taking into account that we have people from different countries posting here.

Great replies above, I'd have to agree with many of them.
For instance, one of my problems is using articles, like Agnieszka have mentioned. I live in Ukraine and we simply don't have them in my language.

I would mention also that one of the biggest problems here is using the gerund and infinitive correctly. We don't have gerund in my language.
Compare: the verb "stop" + gerund and "stop" + infinitive have different meaning in English:
e.g. "He stopped reading a newspaper" means "He was reading a newspaper and now he doesn't read it anymore".
e.g. "He stopped to read a newspaper" means "He was walking and now he stopped in order to read a newspaper"
In Ukrainian (and Russian) the verb "to stop" has two different verbs for these two cases: "Vin perestav chytaty gazetu" and "Vin zupynyvsya schob pochytaty gazetu"

I could give you much more examples of different usage of the gerund and infinitive in English and Ukrainian. Improper use of gerund and infinitive in business writing are very common, and they can drastically change the meaning of this or that phrase and thus (sometimes) even the whole document or conversation.

It is only one of things I can think of right now, I'll maybe write some more later.

Thank you for a great topic, once again. :)

Yaroslava

P.S. Cool joke from mgoodman, and "The Rules of Writing" by LittleWhacky is a true killer! :D
 
Posted by: telemoxie Accepted Answer
7/5/2005 10:58 PM (CST)
My sense is that business folks in the US market, who typically have less international contact than, say, Europeans, are overly sensitive to many of the subtle issues raised above. It often seems to me that many "foreign" writers just don't seem very concerned about this "problem". After all, if they cared, they would hire an editor.

If I'm reading between the lines correctly, you are interested in providing some sort of service (training, editing?) to these folks. If so, you will need to begin by convincing them that these communications problems are many times more serious than they believe them to be.
 
Posted by: Frances* Author Response
7/6/2005 4:18 AM (CST)
Well, for me at least, these have been these have been the most interesting responses I've gained from marketingprofs so far. Thank you to everyone.
ChrisB - I'm glad you were referring to First language speakers (got a little worried there.) This shows how misunderstanding can happen even between an ENglish speaker and an English speaker!)
The jokes are wonderful and Mushfique - viva mother tongues!
Virago, the issues in SA seem very similar to those in China (I'm talking about the effect of rote learning in English etc. However, we are a long way from solving this problem here but there have been some good initiatives).

To add my little bit of localisation - in South Africa, many people ALSO have problems with articles and with many of the tenses - especially continuous tenses which tend to be overused ('I will be going' instead of 'I will go'.) Of course this is a generalisation because we have so many different types of ESL speakers here!
 
Posted by: Frances* Author Response
7/6/2005 4:48 AM (CST)
Telemoxie, you raise an interesting point. I can say at least in South Africa, ESL speakers are often very concerned about their grammar - overly so.

I do feel that English L1ers are often unnecessarily snotty about our grammar - ironic, when often even we can't agree about what's grammatical and what's not.

Unfortunately, this DOES have an important effect because it makes L2 speakers become very anxious about their grammar. This loss of confidence does affect writing - as writing clearly (like speaking clearly) requires confidence.

When I train in South Africa, I start by asking participants what they want to get out of the course. Often, the most common response is 'grammar', even though their competency in grammar is not bad at all.

When they have finished the course (which focuses first on planning, next on how to write clearly and only at the end on grammar), they change their minds (well, hopefully they do). Whereas before they were just focused on grammar and using 'impressive' complex constructions, now they focus first on WHAT they want to say. Then on how to say it clearly. And finally on checking their grammar.

To me, this process is really important. So it's not to say grammar is unimportant, but it is to say that in terms of process, it should be 'done' after the whole thought process.
 
Posted by: gussosa Accepted Answer
7/6/2005 12:21 PM (CST)
I am Gustavo, from Uruguay, a 26 years old engineer.

Now I go on with your questions:

1 - The main problem is the lack of vocabulary.

2 - Southamericans tend to be too intimate for US standards. We kiss, hug and touch, and we use to close ur emails with things like 'A kiss' or 'A big hug to you'

3 - Misuses of 'do' and 'have'

4 - English is a second language to any global executive in the world. In technical careers (I am Industrial Engineer) is a sine qua non proficiency, as most of the literature is written in english. Everyone in South America should have english, spanish and portuguese proficiencies. Let me call your attention to this point, most people forgets about it.

Hugs people;

Gustavo
 
Posted by: Carl Crawford Accepted Answer
7/6/2005 1:31 PM (CST)
Hi Frances,

I have been thinking about this question for a few days, so I can give a clear simple answer.

From what I have observed about ESL speakers online in chat rooms and message boards, most that have VERY GOOD English skills tend to say at the beginning "Sorry for my bad English". If they didn't say anything I would have thought they spoke English as a first language.

When ever I see that I all ways send them a note saying that there English was BETTER than most English speaker, which it IS.

Then there are the ESL speakers that have some English skills, mostly young people 15 to 25 ish. They tend to put text speck or txt in their version of English.

They use "u" instead of "you"

h r u instead of "how are you"

But they also seem you use English words that don't get used very often. So I sort of know what they mean but I am not very sure. Often I have to go and look at a dictionary to find the word that they are talking about. I normally find that the word is what I believed it to be but it is a great way to increase in vocabulary.

One of my friends who is from Malaysia has very good English skills. He was the high call DUX, which means that he had the highest marks in our school; this was the year before you go to university.

When I was looking at his marks from when he was in Malaysia I noticed that they were all in the 90%, English 90%, Math’s 100%, etch etc until I got to Malaysian language 59%. When I asked him why he got such a bad mark he told me that English was easier to learn, speck and write.

He told me that in English if you don't know a work then you can sound it out and you might have a chance of remembering what the word is for, but in Malaysian you either know the word or you don't, there is no way to guess what it means.

Other ESL students that I have spoken to also say that English is easier to learn, it is only the exceptions to the rules that are hard.

When EVER they say that, I can say with certainty that an English speaker will say "even I don't know the exceptions don't worry about it".

When I was in primary school we were NEVER taught grammar, they always said "You will learn it next year" and then when I got to the next year they said "You should have learn it last year". So even as an English speaker for 20 years, I STILL can’t use grammar correctly. I don't know how my parents or all the other people learned it; I am slowly picking it up.
 
Posted by: Head Coach Accepted Answer
7/6/2005 2:21 PM (CST)
How about a post from someone who went to a graduate school that was one-half foreign language (anything besides your mother tongue) and second half best graduate school for international business on the planet? No names but check Business Week for the answer. Then to add to this my post-grad work was with a Fortune 50 international oil company whereby I visited over 60 countries and lived and worked in four others?

I liked the above posts and feelings erupted when I read many. So I guess that is what I would like to bring to this post, those times when the words were a poor 10% of the communication and the feelings were a blazing 1000% of the message. These stories are too long for the post but for those of us that have been the recipient know where langauage fails hearts and minds sometimes win. These people know something incredibly critical will be lost if their point is not understood and they are almost frozen by the understanding of their poor tools to express themselves in English yet they powerfully emote what they can. Sometimes simply, sometimes brokenly, to those people I hope I rose to the occaision and made the translation needed.
 
Posted by: NoStressXpress Accepted Answer
7/7/2005 8:28 AM (CST)
I worked for a Japanese company for 18 years and I found myself either being the "ghost" writer for Japanese executives or the person who modified/edited Japlish into business English. English is not my native tongue but I do speak, write, and express myself confidently in it because I immigrated to the United States when I was 7 years old.

The Japanese executive will go through great lengths to ensure that any correspondence authored by him will be grammatically correct and precise in its meaning. Even before a letter goes out, they will let a few American executives review and edit it. The letter will go out ONLY if all the reviewers agree to the meaning of the letter's content.

I learned a lot about the Japanese culture by simply editing their correspondences. For example, when the Japanese CEO wrote a directive I had to convert it from third person (plural) to first person (singular). It is true, most Japanese business decisions are made as a group (to share the blame in case of failure)!

I hope I was able to contribute to the answers you are seeking.

Conrad
 
Posted by: Carl Crawford Accepted Answer
7/7/2005 10:36 AM (CST)
NoExpress really?

Then how did these happen?

www.engrish.com


Note: I also know there are MANY sites like this but reversed, so Japanese that has been use incorrectly in English products.
 
Posted by: SRyan ;] Accepted Answer
7/8/2005 7:33 PM (CST)
Love this thread, Frances and Suze!

Being from Texas, some people may think that *I* am an ESL victim. It's all a matter of perspective, I guess.

Here's how I'd sum up my own observation about ESL folks, especially when they're trying to communicate in writing:
They're too damn polite.

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