I had a meeting with a prospective Korean client yesterday. I came out of the meeting with a slight migraine. Chopping up my English required me to simplify everything and converse in single verbs and adjectives: “here. Up. See?” “No. Market, good. yah?. Prices, lowww. Many, many.” “Yes, yes. No”. “Me. Cheap only” – (gad, I think I sounded like a prostitute). Using hand gestures to demonstrate my point, they didn’t reciprocate at all: they spoke in Korean and the occasional halting English which I could barely understand.
Which reminds me of my good friend Marc, who’s now based in Singapore. He goes on business trips overseas and I always wonder how he manages to communicate with non-English speaking colleagues without the aid of a translator. You know, like speaking with someone who keeps on nodding his head and saying yes all the time, only to find out later that he didn’t understand a single word you said.
No comments:
Post a Comment