Ah, the holiday afterglow: Leftovers in the fridge, trash in the garage and new-gadget owners in a tizzy. Yes, this is the time of year when millions of folks are trying to make their stuff work, and some even turn to the owner’s manuals for advice. But they often discover (you may find this shocking) that the manuals (gasp!) make no sense.
The most interesting toy that came to our house this past Christmas is a helicopter that flies by remote control – or, as the manual puts it, “remote contro.” It boasts an “intelligentized R/C system” and a “safeguard battery model to prolong the uses life” – and it comes complete with documentation that’s entirely weird and inscrutable.
A booklet advises us on everything from battery installation (“Install the battery must recognize the battery and battery box is precise”) to power management (“While the indicator of the controller is sparkle, which shows the controller is lack of power”). It covers the first attempts at flying (“Repeatedly practices to gradual practice flight in a rotundity”) as well as avoiding a crash (“Loose the throttle stick or pull it sown too fast”).
Made overseas? Most certainly. Written there? Apparently so.
The world, of course, is a global marketplace – and it has been for a good long time. For centuries we’ve been buying cigars from Cuba, wines from France and wooden shoes from Holland – and now most of our electronics come from Asia, where the manufacturing is fast and inexpensive, and the language barrier is high.
A lot of people from the Far East have learned to do business in many other languages – making things much easier for us Yankees. Yet the deep lingual differences between the Orient and the western world are still tough to break through.
But here’s the good news: One thing that can’t be manufactured far away is a natural facility with the home-town lingo – the ability to clearly and cleanly get ideas across without a lot of confusion and “What does ‘suffer by itself blade vortex’ mean?” For anyone who’s willing to try, using one’s own native language intelligently can be a great competitive tool.
Native speakers can send e-mails that their co-workers will readily understand. They can deliver presentations that quickly and smoothly make sense. And they can include instructions that leave people thinking “Ah, that’s the information I was looking for,” instead of “Maybe I should take this thing back to the store.”
With the pace of globalization, it won’t be long before a lot of smart people decide that language is the next frontier and start making plans to pump up their skills. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea for more westerners to get a few more languages under our belts, instead of relying on others to bridge the gap.
But in the short term, even those of us who are working with a limited set of skills can get a handle on our own proficiency. And we can all use communication as a great home-court advantage.
