Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese? - Hallo World !!! News Today in World, In this article you read by title Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?, We've prepared this article well so you can read and retrieve information on it. Hopefully the contents of the post
Article LIFT, What we write can you understand. Okay, happy reading.
Title : Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
link : Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
You are now reading the article Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese? With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/09/q-can-i-expect-singaporean-company-to.html
Title : Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
link : Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
news-today.world | Hi guys. I am posting an email which I had sent earlier today at work and don't worry - I am not revealing the name of the individual or the company, I will strip piece of all information that will allow you to possibly identify the individual or the company involved. I'm not here to name and shame the company in Singapore, but I really just want to highlight the issue involved and I want my readers in Singapore to tell me if I am being fair or if I am indeed being way too unreasonable. So, allow me to set the context here: I can't be too specific about what kind of service this company provides but it suffices to say they are providing a B2B (business to business) service within the financial services sector - that means their clients are other businesses within banking but they do not offer any services to the general public. So this company is set up by a bunch of Brits, replicating a business model used in the West and has their Asian HQ in Singapore even though they do have a number of other Asian offices in the region. That's all I will say about this company for now, though it is their attitude towards a Taiwanese company I deal with regularly that I want to examine here - well, this episode has left me so frustrated with both the expatriates in Singapore as well as local Singaporeans!
Now I have encountered a problem with them - I have a Taiwanese client from a company in Kaohsiung who wishes to use their services, I had done my research and this company in Singapore came highly recommended. This lady in Taiwan speaks no English at all - I mean literally no English, it's not like her English is limited. She doesn't understand English as she is of a certain age and you just don't expect people like that in Taiwan to be able to speak much or any English at all. I thought the company in Singapore would be able to communicate with her in Taiwan but no, the British expatriate boss replied to her emails asking her (politely) to write in English and there was a series of emails which were clearly done with Google translate. I then told them, look you're in Singapore for crying out aloud, you must have someone in your office who speaks Mandarin decently and if not, hire someone - get a bilingual temp in, they don't cost much. This is Singapore we're talking about here! It then transpired that there are some Singaporean-Chinese people working in that office, but they were either unwilling or unable to communicate in Chinese with my Taiwanese client. One lady I spoke to claimed that she flunked Chinese in school and had no confidence in communicating in Chinese (and I was like, woah - you speak English with such a strong Singaporean accent, yet you can't speak Mandarin? How does that work?) Rest assured I only thought that, I didn't say that to her. Then there was someone else with a Chinese name, but his attitude was, "nope, it's not my job to do customer service, so please don't ask me to communicate in Chinese."
So this company was adamant that if my client in Taiwan wanted to use their services, the onus was on the Taiwanese to hire a translator to help them communicate in English - rather than for the company in Singapore to find someone willing and able to serve the client in Chinese. If the client was like Mongolian, then fair enough - I wouldn't expect them to find a Mongolian translator in Singapore - but this client only wants to communicate in Chinese, which is an official language in Singapore! found their attitude disappointing to say the least - after all, I pride myself in speaking seven languages fluently and I get by in about 20 languages, I would rather struggle on in say German or Italian with a client who doesn't speak English than to say, "no my German/Italian isn't good enough so I can't help." I have a very pragmatic attitude when it comes to using my foreign languages and of course, there's a part of me that sneers that these white expatriates who spend decades in Asia without learning a word of the local language. But then again, I also sneer at Singaporeans who can't speak basic Mandarin despite having studied it for over ten years in school and I especially despise people who are unhelpful in the office and claim, "nope, not in my job description, don't bother me." Needless to say, there was plenty wrong with these guys that drove me nuts. Yet if my client had been able to speak at least some English, we wouldn't have encountered this problem at all as they are very good at what they do - it just hasn't occurred to them at all that they may encounter Asian clients who don't speak English. Perhaps I'm biased but I found the situation infuriating.
So here's an extract from the email I sent the British boss of the company in Singapore: "As for the client in Taiwan, she has all your forms but the reason why she hasn't filled those up is because she is just put off by the lack of willingness on the part of (the company) to get someone who is willing to answer an email in Chinese or take a phone call in Chinese – there are similar (insert name of type of service company) in Taiwan and Hong Kong who have multilingual staff at hand and personally, as someone who speaks seven languages fluently, I do see her point of view. You are operating in a very multilingual part of the world – Singapore has four official languages and the vast majority of the locals are either bilingual or trilingual. In London, one may get away with being monolingual and just expect everyone to speak English but this is certainly not the case in Asia. I’m sorry if I am speaking out of turn, but the initial interactions have not inspired confidence on her part. I’ve tried everything I could to facilitate the communication and acted as your translator already – she has a great impression of (my company) as a result of my helpfulness and willingness to translate for her but not of (your company). In the long run, for you to operate successfully in this part of the world, you need to assemble a team with the right language skills. I hate to be so honest and forgive me if I have been too blunt."
Now let me be clear on one point: I'm not berating the Angmoh for not being able to speak Mandarin - it is a painfully difficult language for foreigners to learn and very few actually learn Chinese to a high enough standard to handle the complex requests of this Taiwanese client the way I do on a daily basis. Even if you can speak Mandarin like a native speaker, you need to be able to speak financial Chinese, which includes a whole new set of vocabulary that we use to describe financial instruments - that's not the kind of knowledge that even someone like my father (who is a retired Chinese teacher) would have. And even if the boss of this company is indeed a monolingual British expat in Asia, then the least he can do is hire someone in his office who is able to speak Mandarin very well and tell that person, "part of your job description includes helping us out with clients who prefer to communicate in Chinese." That's all he needs to do and given that this is Singapore - it can't be hard to find a credible candidate who does speak Mandarin very confidently. But somehow, the Singaporean-Chinese people working in that company are unwilling and/or unable to communicate in Chinese. Look, I am a salesman and have been selling for years - there's a wise saying that I truly believe in: the language of business is the language of the customer. And if you want to sell to the Taiwanese, if you want their money, you jolly well speak Mandarin and Hokkien - you just can't expect them to speak English when they are the customer.
Is my Mandarin any good? Hell no. Mandarin is my third language after English and French. I struggled with Chinese when I was on a business trip in Shenzhen, China earlier this year. I spent years pretending I don't speak any Mandarin just to annoy my father who is a retired Chinese teacher - we have this passive-aggressive relationship where we don't talk about our warped feelings and I resort to pretending I don't speak Chinese just to make him feel like a failure because he once claimed that as a Chinese teacher, he would have 'no face' if his own children couldn't even speak Chinese. Right, that's my cue to pretend I can't speak any Mandarin at all in a bid to embarrass him. To be honest, I can converse in Mandarin perfectly well - it's just that I really struggle to read and write. I spent most of my childhood training gymnastics and the Singapore national team used a lot of coaches from Beijing, so we were in a Mandarin-only environment and even the white, Malay and Indian gymnasts had to learn some Mandarin to communicate with the Chinese coaches. Hence thanks to my many coaches from China, I speak Mandarin beautifully with a northern accent - but by the very same token, because I was in the gym training rather than doing my Chinese homework, I haven't paid my dues when it came to memorizing those thousands of complex characters. I often struggled with Chinese tests and exams back in school as I was the lazy kid who didn't spend hours memorizing the huge chunks of texts that we had to learn for those tests. I probably spoke Mandarin better than most of the people in my class yet I usually had the worst grades.
Fast forward to today: I am writing complex emails to my Taiwanese clients in traditional Chinese, a language I had never learnt to write. I cheat of course - there's an app for it: I simply speak into my phone and the voice-to-text app turns my spoken Mandarin into either traditional or simplified Chinese text. As long as I speak slowly and clearly, it is usually quite accurate and even if it makes an error or two, the reader can usually figure out what I am trying to say from the context. When they reply in Chinese, I use an app to translate it into English. In any case, my Taiwanese clients are not evil Chinese teachers - hell no, they're extremely appreciative of the fact that I am making a genuine effort to communicate with them in their native language rather than insisting that they struggle on in English. When I am on the phone with them, there are times when I do struggle to find the right terms in Chinese as I have not worked in a Chinese banking environment before and dealt with all this jargon in Mandarin but the bottom line is that they know I am very keen to help and that counts far more than being able to get precisely the right technical definition every time. And look, I've spent 21 years in Europe (mostly in France and the UK), I've not been in a Mandarin speaking environment for over two decades yet I am still willing to use whatever Chinese skills I have to serve my Taiwanese clients. It is on that basis that I think, if I can communicate with the Taiwanese like that after two decades in Europe of not speaking Chinese, what the hell is wrong with you people in Singapore? If anyone has an excuse not to be able to speak any Chinese, it would be me!
Am I being too harsh on this company then? For the sake of the argument, one could argue that if you want to be taken seriously in the financial services industry in 2018, you can't claim not to be able to have a single person in your company who can speak English. Indeed, many young people in countries like China, South Korea and Japan are not making a genuine effort to learn English and the standard of English in these countries have improved a lot in recent years. By that token, should the priority and focus for this company in Singapore be about providing local-language customer services? Or should they focus on other more technical aspects about transacting in these complex financial instruments? Take the two Chinese-Singaporeans working at that company who can't speak/won't speak Mandarin to my Taiwanese clients: I don't doubt that they are very good at their jobs and have the requisite technical knowledge in order - it just so happens that they are not willing or able to speak Chinese today. And clearly, the company may be missing out on the Taiwanese market but whilst operating in English speaking Asian markets, they have still been able to do reasonably well and are still in business today. Clearly, not having a fluent Mandarin speaker on their team hasn't really hurt their business (much) thus far. So there - I have addressed the other side of the argument in the name of balance!
So what do you think? Would you go as far as to expect expatriates to learn the local language should they want to work in an Asian country - or have we evolved to the stage where English is ultimately the international language for business? And what is it with Singaporeans who spend ten or more years studying Chinese at school, only to be totally unable to use it in a work context? Why is the general standard of Chinese so poor in Singapore? How many Singaporeans are actually able to deal with a Taiwanese client who doesn't speak English - we're talking about dealing with emails in traditional Chinese and having to explain technical details entirely in Chinese? And please tell me: am I simply being a total biatch because I expect everybody to speak several languages and I have such disdain for monolingual people? Do let me know what you think and please leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.
 |
| Can we expect a Singaporean company to have a Chinese-speaker? |
Now I have encountered a problem with them - I have a Taiwanese client from a company in Kaohsiung who wishes to use their services, I had done my research and this company in Singapore came highly recommended. This lady in Taiwan speaks no English at all - I mean literally no English, it's not like her English is limited. She doesn't understand English as she is of a certain age and you just don't expect people like that in Taiwan to be able to speak much or any English at all. I thought the company in Singapore would be able to communicate with her in Taiwan but no, the British expatriate boss replied to her emails asking her (politely) to write in English and there was a series of emails which were clearly done with Google translate. I then told them, look you're in Singapore for crying out aloud, you must have someone in your office who speaks Mandarin decently and if not, hire someone - get a bilingual temp in, they don't cost much. This is Singapore we're talking about here! It then transpired that there are some Singaporean-Chinese people working in that office, but they were either unwilling or unable to communicate in Chinese with my Taiwanese client. One lady I spoke to claimed that she flunked Chinese in school and had no confidence in communicating in Chinese (and I was like, woah - you speak English with such a strong Singaporean accent, yet you can't speak Mandarin? How does that work?) Rest assured I only thought that, I didn't say that to her. Then there was someone else with a Chinese name, but his attitude was, "nope, it's not my job to do customer service, so please don't ask me to communicate in Chinese."
So this company was adamant that if my client in Taiwan wanted to use their services, the onus was on the Taiwanese to hire a translator to help them communicate in English - rather than for the company in Singapore to find someone willing and able to serve the client in Chinese. If the client was like Mongolian, then fair enough - I wouldn't expect them to find a Mongolian translator in Singapore - but this client only wants to communicate in Chinese, which is an official language in Singapore! found their attitude disappointing to say the least - after all, I pride myself in speaking seven languages fluently and I get by in about 20 languages, I would rather struggle on in say German or Italian with a client who doesn't speak English than to say, "no my German/Italian isn't good enough so I can't help." I have a very pragmatic attitude when it comes to using my foreign languages and of course, there's a part of me that sneers that these white expatriates who spend decades in Asia without learning a word of the local language. But then again, I also sneer at Singaporeans who can't speak basic Mandarin despite having studied it for over ten years in school and I especially despise people who are unhelpful in the office and claim, "nope, not in my job description, don't bother me." Needless to say, there was plenty wrong with these guys that drove me nuts. Yet if my client had been able to speak at least some English, we wouldn't have encountered this problem at all as they are very good at what they do - it just hasn't occurred to them at all that they may encounter Asian clients who don't speak English. Perhaps I'm biased but I found the situation infuriating.
 |
| Are you able to communicate effectively in Chinese? |
So here's an extract from the email I sent the British boss of the company in Singapore: "As for the client in Taiwan, she has all your forms but the reason why she hasn't filled those up is because she is just put off by the lack of willingness on the part of (the company) to get someone who is willing to answer an email in Chinese or take a phone call in Chinese – there are similar (insert name of type of service company) in Taiwan and Hong Kong who have multilingual staff at hand and personally, as someone who speaks seven languages fluently, I do see her point of view. You are operating in a very multilingual part of the world – Singapore has four official languages and the vast majority of the locals are either bilingual or trilingual. In London, one may get away with being monolingual and just expect everyone to speak English but this is certainly not the case in Asia. I’m sorry if I am speaking out of turn, but the initial interactions have not inspired confidence on her part. I’ve tried everything I could to facilitate the communication and acted as your translator already – she has a great impression of (my company) as a result of my helpfulness and willingness to translate for her but not of (your company). In the long run, for you to operate successfully in this part of the world, you need to assemble a team with the right language skills. I hate to be so honest and forgive me if I have been too blunt."
Now let me be clear on one point: I'm not berating the Angmoh for not being able to speak Mandarin - it is a painfully difficult language for foreigners to learn and very few actually learn Chinese to a high enough standard to handle the complex requests of this Taiwanese client the way I do on a daily basis. Even if you can speak Mandarin like a native speaker, you need to be able to speak financial Chinese, which includes a whole new set of vocabulary that we use to describe financial instruments - that's not the kind of knowledge that even someone like my father (who is a retired Chinese teacher) would have. And even if the boss of this company is indeed a monolingual British expat in Asia, then the least he can do is hire someone in his office who is able to speak Mandarin very well and tell that person, "part of your job description includes helping us out with clients who prefer to communicate in Chinese." That's all he needs to do and given that this is Singapore - it can't be hard to find a credible candidate who does speak Mandarin very confidently. But somehow, the Singaporean-Chinese people working in that company are unwilling and/or unable to communicate in Chinese. Look, I am a salesman and have been selling for years - there's a wise saying that I truly believe in: the language of business is the language of the customer. And if you want to sell to the Taiwanese, if you want their money, you jolly well speak Mandarin and Hokkien - you just can't expect them to speak English when they are the customer.
Is my Mandarin any good? Hell no. Mandarin is my third language after English and French. I struggled with Chinese when I was on a business trip in Shenzhen, China earlier this year. I spent years pretending I don't speak any Mandarin just to annoy my father who is a retired Chinese teacher - we have this passive-aggressive relationship where we don't talk about our warped feelings and I resort to pretending I don't speak Chinese just to make him feel like a failure because he once claimed that as a Chinese teacher, he would have 'no face' if his own children couldn't even speak Chinese. Right, that's my cue to pretend I can't speak any Mandarin at all in a bid to embarrass him. To be honest, I can converse in Mandarin perfectly well - it's just that I really struggle to read and write. I spent most of my childhood training gymnastics and the Singapore national team used a lot of coaches from Beijing, so we were in a Mandarin-only environment and even the white, Malay and Indian gymnasts had to learn some Mandarin to communicate with the Chinese coaches. Hence thanks to my many coaches from China, I speak Mandarin beautifully with a northern accent - but by the very same token, because I was in the gym training rather than doing my Chinese homework, I haven't paid my dues when it came to memorizing those thousands of complex characters. I often struggled with Chinese tests and exams back in school as I was the lazy kid who didn't spend hours memorizing the huge chunks of texts that we had to learn for those tests. I probably spoke Mandarin better than most of the people in my class yet I usually had the worst grades.
Fast forward to today: I am writing complex emails to my Taiwanese clients in traditional Chinese, a language I had never learnt to write. I cheat of course - there's an app for it: I simply speak into my phone and the voice-to-text app turns my spoken Mandarin into either traditional or simplified Chinese text. As long as I speak slowly and clearly, it is usually quite accurate and even if it makes an error or two, the reader can usually figure out what I am trying to say from the context. When they reply in Chinese, I use an app to translate it into English. In any case, my Taiwanese clients are not evil Chinese teachers - hell no, they're extremely appreciative of the fact that I am making a genuine effort to communicate with them in their native language rather than insisting that they struggle on in English. When I am on the phone with them, there are times when I do struggle to find the right terms in Chinese as I have not worked in a Chinese banking environment before and dealt with all this jargon in Mandarin but the bottom line is that they know I am very keen to help and that counts far more than being able to get precisely the right technical definition every time. And look, I've spent 21 years in Europe (mostly in France and the UK), I've not been in a Mandarin speaking environment for over two decades yet I am still willing to use whatever Chinese skills I have to serve my Taiwanese clients. It is on that basis that I think, if I can communicate with the Taiwanese like that after two decades in Europe of not speaking Chinese, what the hell is wrong with you people in Singapore? If anyone has an excuse not to be able to speak any Chinese, it would be me!
Am I being too harsh on this company then? For the sake of the argument, one could argue that if you want to be taken seriously in the financial services industry in 2018, you can't claim not to be able to have a single person in your company who can speak English. Indeed, many young people in countries like China, South Korea and Japan are not making a genuine effort to learn English and the standard of English in these countries have improved a lot in recent years. By that token, should the priority and focus for this company in Singapore be about providing local-language customer services? Or should they focus on other more technical aspects about transacting in these complex financial instruments? Take the two Chinese-Singaporeans working at that company who can't speak/won't speak Mandarin to my Taiwanese clients: I don't doubt that they are very good at their jobs and have the requisite technical knowledge in order - it just so happens that they are not willing or able to speak Chinese today. And clearly, the company may be missing out on the Taiwanese market but whilst operating in English speaking Asian markets, they have still been able to do reasonably well and are still in business today. Clearly, not having a fluent Mandarin speaker on their team hasn't really hurt their business (much) thus far. So there - I have addressed the other side of the argument in the name of balance!
So what do you think? Would you go as far as to expect expatriates to learn the local language should they want to work in an Asian country - or have we evolved to the stage where English is ultimately the international language for business? And what is it with Singaporeans who spend ten or more years studying Chinese at school, only to be totally unable to use it in a work context? Why is the general standard of Chinese so poor in Singapore? How many Singaporeans are actually able to deal with a Taiwanese client who doesn't speak English - we're talking about dealing with emails in traditional Chinese and having to explain technical details entirely in Chinese? And please tell me: am I simply being a total biatch because I expect everybody to speak several languages and I have such disdain for monolingual people? Do let me know what you think and please leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading.
That's an article Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese?
Fine for article Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese? This time, hopefully can benefit for you all. Well, see you in other article postings.
You are now reading the article Q: Can I expect a Singaporean company to speak Chinese? With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/09/q-can-i-expect-singaporean-company-to.html