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 #17 (permalink) Wed Jul 25, 2007 21:35 pm Intercultural communication |
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I know a lot of translators who are native speakers of English, and most of them dislike using "imprint" as the translation of "Impressum" on German websites. The problem is that there really isn't one "perfect" word in English for that. "About" usually seems a better choice to English speakers, but speakers of German tend to reject this. I once saw a German website that had chosen to use "Legal Stuff" instead of "Imprint" (and in addition to "About us"). :lol:
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| #18 (permalink) Wed Jul 25, 2007 23:42 pm Intercultural communication |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
A high-level technical manager has to work in Germany with a colleague who is stiff, official and cold as ice. The American thinks it's going to be mighty hard to get things done with this guy if he doesn't loosen up. So the American does what he would do in the States, and he invites the coworker out for a beer after work. At the pub, the German relaxes and becomes a very warm, open person, and it's clear to the American that this improvement in their rapport will make their cooperation on the job easier. After all, it would in the US. However, Monday comes and the German's personality goes back down to 20 degrees below freezing, and he's as hard as ever to work with.
Something similar has happened to me also, and the only thing I could think was that Germans are extreme in compartmentalizing their time and behavior. The job is for stiffness, the bar is for looseness, and never the twain shall meet.
What do you think? |
Hi Jamie
Well, I do think that Germans tend to be very adept at compartmentalizing -- both in their thinking as well as in their physical surroundings. That seems to fit nicely with a procedure-oriented mindset, don't you think? And there's also the fact that the 'Sie' and 'Du' forms of address are pretty strictly adhered to. I mean, establishing that "we are now on Du terms with each other" is usually pretty officially done and fairly "ceremonial". :) (At least that's how it was in the part of Germany where I lived.) I did courses in some American companies in Germany. In one, it had been established as company policy that co-workers should address each other with first names (rather than the usual Herr/Frau Schmidt, etc.). I found it interesting -- but not really surprising -- that most nevertheless continued to use the Sie form of address.
I think it's entirely possible that a casual approach at work might easily be misinterpretted by quite a few Germans as 'not serious enough' or inappropriate for the workplace. I think this would be especially true of older managierial types. I can also imagine that some Germans might misinterpret an American's apparent casualness as a sign of disrespect. And, who knows... a German on a job assignment in the US might experience "withdrawal symptoms" brought on by a severe lack of hand-shakes. :lol: That was something that I really had to adjust to when I first arrived in Germany: shaking hands with people seemingly a hundred times a day.
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| #19 (permalink) Wed Jul 25, 2007 23:57 pm Intercultural communication |
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TD
Whoa, that's serious! I figured it was just there for informational purposes.
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Jamie/Amy
I haven't actually spent much time in Germany, but some friends in Italy made comments along the lines that German trains always arrive and depart on time.
(and I suppose this Q is for Torsten too)
Are Germans generally regarded as punctilious and/or punctual people? If so, is that reputation deserved?
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Prezbucky
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| #20 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 0:10 am Intercultural communication |
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| prezbucky wrote: |
| Are Germans generally regarded as punctilious and/or punctual people? If so, is that reputation deserved? |
Yes and yes! You can set your watch by German trains. :lol:
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| #21 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 4:35 am Intercultural communication |
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Once I was on a German train, and I said to the conductor (in German), "We'll be arriving in Nuremberg at around 7:00, right?" He immediately barked, "EINS!" I asked, "Wie, bitte?" ("Pardon me?"), and he blurted, "Sieben Uhr EINS!" -- "Seven-O-ONE!"
He seemed really irked that I'd been so sloppy as to leave out that "one". It may not just have been because he was German. It could have been a professional deformity of train conductors.
By the way, I read in a book today that one Korean executive complained that getting necessary information from a German company can be really difficult. He said that if one key person in the food chain is not there, you have to wait for the info, and that if that person happens to be on vacation, you might have to wait as long as a month! |
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| #22 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 6:29 am Intercultural communication |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| He seemed really irked that I'd been so sloppy as to leave out that "one". |
Well, your social blunder could have been worse, Jamie. If the train had been scheduled to arrive at 6:58, for example (gasp!). :lol:
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| By the way, I read in a book today that one Korean executive complained that getting necessary information from a German company can be really difficult. He said that if one key person in the food chain is not there, you have to wait for the info, |
But don't you think that happens in American companies, too?
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| and that if that person happens to be on vacation, you might have to wait as long as a month! |
Yes, in combination with 30 days of vacation time, it certainly can become much more noticeable that a critical link is missing. On the other hand, most Germans don't usually take all of their vacation time at once. Two weeks at a time certainly isn't unusual, though.
A lot of Germans I know did take month-long vacations at the end of their temporary job assignments in the US. They even have a name for this trip. They refer to it as their "Western Trip" and they all always went to the same places out west: the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, various stops in California, etc. Have you noticed this with your guys too?
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| #23 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:39 am Intercultural communication |
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| Yankee wrote: |
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| By the way, I read in a book today that one Korean executive complained that getting necessary information from a German company can be really difficult. He said that if one key person in the food chain is not there, you have to wait for the info, |
But don't you think that happens in American companies, too? |
Evidently the problem was so much more severe with German companies that the Korean executive found it worthy of comment. Anytime I've had to call a US company for information, there's usually another person or two who has it besides the main guy. In many cases his secretary knows everything, or else she knows who's handling things for him while he's gone. It's rather seldom here that you get an information blackout just because one guy is away.
| Yankee wrote: |
| A lot of Germans I know did take month-long vacations at the end of their temporary job assignments in the US. They even have a name for this trip. They refer to it as their "Western Trip" and they all always went to the same places out west: the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, various stops in California, etc. Have you noticed this with your guys too? |
I haven't noticed that, because most of them have taken trips out west during the years they were working here, or had even been to those places years before they were transferred to the US in the first place.
What I notice more often -- especially with interns and younger employees -- is that they want to visit every clich? place that everyone's heard about. Generally they first go to Chicago but don't do any of the interesting things there. They return telling you about shopping, night clubs, Navy Pier and the top of the Sears Tower. (I find that Germans seldom visit a place without going to the top of something. We have some magnificent art deco skyscrapers in Detroit. The Germans visit them, take a cursory look around at what to us would be breathtaking architecture, and then they ask to go to the top and look out. When they're told there's a radio station at the tip, or whatever, and that tourists can't go up there, it seems to make them nervous.) After they come back from Chicago, the next trip is usually to Toronto, but they don't do any of the interesting things there. They go to the top of the CN Tower, go shopping, go to clubs, whatever. If they have enough money, they then go to New York City, but they don't do any of the interesting things there. The same is repeated for Los Angeles, and at some point they go to Las Vegas. After that, they are convinced that they've seen the entire United States, and their wanderlust is gone. It is impossible to convince this type of German that the drive out to Wyoming is a really cool trip, or even to the Grand Canyon. This type uses Detroit as a base to go everywhere else, and on the mistaken assumption that there's nothing in Michigan, they generally leave with no knowledge of anything but the bars near their apartment and the scary neighborhood where their plant is.
There is another style I find, usually among young women, which is to take car trips around the immediate environs of Detroit. They seldom leave the state. There's plenty for them to see and do here, but they surprise me in the opposite way. They routinely spend a day or two in places where in my opinion there's absolutely nothing to see or do. Once I was surprised that a girl had spent her weekend in Monroe, Michigan, and I asked her what there could be to do there. She said, "Walk around and see how people live." I have to say I understood this better than I understood drinking and shopping in every city that's famous from TV.
There's another pattern I notice, and this also seems specific to young German women, which is a complete, categorical refusal to go indoors when it's sunny outside. Most people want to enjoy the sun, but with these other people it's pathological. They'll travel somewhere with a really nice itinerary in their purses, and they'll scuttle 100 percent of it because it happens to be sunny that day. I could see wanting to hit the beach in Miami on a good day, but downtown Chicago doesn't strike me as such a bikini mecca that it would be worth skipping all the sights just to stay outside. Sometimes the younger Germans will travel in twos or threes, and one will come back complaining that they'd missed everything because another refused to go indoors. |
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| #24 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 14:43 pm Intercultural communication |
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Jamie & Amy
That's hilarious.
The average Italian could not survive there.
This is based on the family friends with whom we (sis and I) stayed -- Saturday routine:
9am: wake up
9:30: get out of bed
9:30-10:30: eat breakfast and basically just sit there at the table
10:30 - 12pm: watch TV
12pm - 1pm: discuss/decide what to do for lunch
1:00-1:30pm: delay lunch by watching more TV -- plan to eat at 2pm
1:30-2pm: talk about eating lunch at 2pm, or "pretty soon"
2pm-2:30pm: watch TV; forget about lunch
2:30-3pm: sit down for lunch; end up talking for half an hour instead
3pm-3:30pm: eat lunch (yes, half an hour to eat a sandwich)
3:30pm-4:00pm: Decide what to do for dinner, what to do for fun that evening
4:00pm-5:00pm: Nap
5:00pm: Start "getting ready" for dinner. Dinner is at 6pm.
6:00pm-7ish pm: Still getting ready for dinner.
7ish pm: Sit down for dinner. Tom is starving.
7:30ish-8:15ish pm: Eat dinner
8:15ish pm: Start getting ready to go out on the town (we're leaving at 9)
9pm: sis and I are ready to go out with fam
10pm: Fam is ready to go out
10:30pm: We go out
etc.
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| #25 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 15:08 pm Intercultural communication |
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| Prezbucky, your description is reminiscent of my dentist's annoyed rants about visits from his Italian cousins. He wants to take them out to do something, but he can't get them away from the breakfast table before 10:00. Then he drives them half an hour to some all-day sight, but then they're already starting to want lunch. They stay at the lunch table until about the middle of the afternoon, and before 4:00 they're interested in dinner. |
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| #26 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 15:45 pm Intercultural communication |
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hi all
This thread is titled International communication, and awareness of how people behave is all fair and good. But does the particular type of observation that is inclined to the negative really encourage international communication?
It is noteworthy that there are so few contributions in comparison to the hits/views.
Could we not start to look at how to develop this concept of International communication?
As opposed to listing all examples that have other effects and intentions than to create communication.
Just a thought guys.
I will start with a bank that is German in origin but has all the internal auditing and feedback concerning job satisfaction in English and open to all subsidaries all over the world. So you may have a branch in a "one horse" town in Germany that writes the feedback in English and is read by English native speakers.
This transparency and using the international business language is proof of the type of communication we are wanting to highlight here, surely.
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| #27 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 16:39 pm Intercultural communication |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| Prezbucky, your description is reminiscent of my dentist's annoyed rants about visits from his Italian cousins. He wants to take them out to do something, but he can't get them away from the breakfast table before 10:00. Then he drives them half an hour to some all-day sight, but then they're already starting to want lunch. They stay at the lunch table until about the middle of the afternoon, and before 4:00 they're interested in dinner. |
Mangiamo!
hehe
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Prezbucky
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| #28 (permalink) Thu Jul 26, 2007 23:58 pm Intercultural communication |
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| stew.t. wrote: |
| This thread is titled International communication, and awareness of how people behave is all fair and good. But does the particular type of observation that is inclined to the negative really encourage international communication? |
I read the title as 'Intercultural Communication'. I don't think you can actually talk about intercultural anything without talking about various cultural tendencies. I think a key to intercultural communication is an awareness and understanding of how other cultures handle and perceive various things. What differences are there? What is similar? Just knowing the language often doesn't suffice because what is said and what is actually meant or expected as well as what is understood are often very different things.
| stew.t. wrote: |
| Could we not start to look at how to develop this concept of International communication? |
Why not just start a thread on that topic, Stew?
| stew.t. wrote: |
As opposed to listing all examples that have other effects and intentions than to create communication.
Just a thought guys.
I will start with a bank that is German in origin but has all the internal auditing and feedback concerning job satisfaction in English and open to all subsidaries all over the world. So you may have a branch in a "one horse" town in Germany that writes the feedback in English and is read by English native speakers.
This transparency and using the international business language is proof of the type of communication we are wanting to highlight here, surely. |
As I mentioned, I believe that culture will influence how words are interpretted and perceived. So, to me 'intercultural communication' involves much more than just which particular language is used.
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| #29 (permalink) Fri Jul 27, 2007 2:49 am Intercultural communication |
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| The only way one can really benefit from intercultural communication is to examine situations where it has broken down and then figure out the reasons. You probably think that's negative, but I think it's productive. |
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| #30 (permalink) Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:46 am Intercultural communication |
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Hi Yankee
Well I thought this thread would be appropriate, as titled, to debate international communication. Maybe you are right and another one needs to be written. When I have time I may just do that.
I agree international communication is more than one single language or even a list of mistakes.
@Jamie I did say the thread "inclined towards the negative". I would be interested to see how you think it is productive.
Granted being aware that errors can occur is necessary for understanding. Surely communication is more than bring aware of the mistakes others make. True we can only really learn from our mistakes. But could this create any barriers?
How do you see simply stating them as being productive?
What does this produce, in your opinion, and from your intention?
What do you think is the productive result to the reader?
Or even how does this aid international communication, when it comes to application of the information processed by reading these examples?
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