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BY KEITH BENMAN
kbenman@nwitimes.com
219.933.3326 | Sunday, April 29, 2007 | (No comments posted.)
Beatty International plant manger Brian Beatty knows the routine when negotiating contracts with Japanese companies for the huge steel milling machines his company manufactures.
An interpreter will put Beatty's words into Japanese for the executives on the other side of the table and then put their words into English for him.
"But I know darn well they know what I say when I say it," Beatty said. "They use the interpreter to buy thinking time."
Spanish interpreter Mariano Torrespico saw the same game played recently when interpreting a conference call for a Chicago hedge fund and a South American real estate developer.
"The Agentinians and the Chileans, they will always ask, 'Are you there yet?' and I know they can understand English," Torrespico said before a recent conference of translators and interpreters for Abe Gomez Continental Languages in Munster.
Anecdotes like those suggest foreign businesses often have an important leg up in negotiations with U.S. companies. And it has nothing to do with the strength of the dollar, the undervalued yuan or protective tariffs.
"See, Japan knows they are an exporting nation. So for the standard of living to stay up, they have to export," Beatty said. "And that means knowing other languages and other cultures."
Up the learning curve
Knowing other languages and other cultures has never been a strength of U.S. businesses and the executives who lead them.
But that may be changing.
Purdue University Calumet in Hammond plans to begin offering Chinese language classes on a consistent basis next school year. The school also wants to offer an Asian studies minor in the near future.
Business majors at Valparaiso University -- many attracted by a $5,000 scholarship and private tutoring for those who select Chinese or Japanese studies as a second major -- are taking Chinese language classes in increasing numbers.
"I think it will be a lot easier to get a job if you know Chinese," Callie Spengler, a freshman at VU majoring in international business, said. "If you get a job with any big corporation overseas, you can speak Chinese."
Spengler was one of more than half-dozen business majors answering questions in Chinese in Professor Jianyun Meng's class on a recent afternoon. Almost all said they had taken the school up on its offer of the Chinese and Japanese studies scholarship.
One, junior finance major Tom Siepman, said he went to China to study last summer and the rewards of knowing even a bit of Chinese were immediate.
"The Chinese people are just more generally nice when they see you even make an effort," Siepman said. "So that's why I want to go back. If you say even one word in Chinese, they perk right up."
'A little more attention'
Still, even with some knowledge of difficult languages like Chinese or Japanese, it is unlikely most American businesspeople could hope actually to conduct business in those languages, Beatty said.
The Beatty International plant manager has taken Japanese at Purdue Calumet and continues to take private lessons. His wife speaks Mandarin Chinese as her native language.
Beatty International, run by the Beatty family since 1917, has conducted business in Asia for more than three decades. Brian Beatty has been at the 45-employee job shop since 1982. He has been to Japan 12 times and China five times.
Beatty qualifies his own proficiency level in Japanese as "conversational," and said he would not be able to conduct a high-level business meeting in Japanese. But he can speak Japanese when going out to dinner or at a foreign colleague's home.
"Certainly it's helpful," Beatty said. "They appreciate the fact you've made the effort, and to understand the protocol helps. But will it get you an order? Not necessarily. But it will get you a little more attention than not."
U.S. students go modern
Students at U.S. colleges and universities, and in particular business students, are apparently taking cues from old-Asia hands like Beatty.
A 2002 survey by the Modern Language Association found students are enrolling in language classes at a rate almost 18 percent higher than students were 20 years before.
The predominant foreign language class remains Spanish, with students enrolled in 746,000 Spanish classes around the country.
But during the last four years, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic enrollments have increased at a quicker pace than enrollments in Spanish classes. In the case of Arabic, the number shot up 92 percent.
World shrinking, school expanding
It's not just at the colleges and universities where interest in foreign languages is picking up.
The Indiana Department of Education is developing new standards for foreign language programs that will include a 13-year "world language" curriculum from kindergarten through 12th grade. However, students are still able to obtain the basic Core-40 high school diploma without ever taking a foreign language.
Schools looking to attract students based on innovation are stressing foreign languages and in many cases are requiring classes in middle school or earlier.
The new Bishop Noll Prep Academy in Hammond, for seventh- and eighth-graders, will require all students to take Mandarin Chinese when it opens its doors this August.
Bishop Noll Institute Principal Scott Fech feels the requirement has been a big selling point for the school. More students already have taken the entrance test than the Prep Academy will be able to accept.
"It's just the sense of how we think the world is shrinking," Fech said of the required Chinese classes. "We can't just think about languages spoken in the United States. We have to think what people are thinking outside the U.S."
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The push for greater security and the globalization of business are driving demand for translators and interpreters. C1
Ten most spoken languages in the world
By number of native speakers:
Mandarin Chinese: 873 million
Hindi: 370 million
Spanish: 350 million
English: 340 million
Arabic: 206 million
Portuguese: 203 million
Bengali: 196 million
Russian: 145 million
Japanese: 126 million
German: 101 million
Sources: Ethnologue and Wikipedia
Top 10 languages at U.S. colleges and universities
A 2002 survey by the Modern Language Association showed the following enrollments* for language classes at U.S. institutions of higher learning:
Spanish: 746,000
French: 202,000
German: 91,000
Italian: 64,000
American Sign Language: 61,000
Japanese: 52,000
Chinese: 34,000
Latin: 30,000
Russian: 24,000
Ancient Greek: 20,000
* Figures rounded to nearest thousand
Source: Modern Language Association
Top "other" languages spoken in U.S.
U.S. Census data shows the following numbers of people reported they speak a language other than English at home:
Spanish: 32.2 million
Chinese: 2.3 million
French: 2 million
Tagalog: 1.4 million
German: 1.1 million
Vietnamese: 1.1 million
Korean: 987,000
Russian: 831,000
Italian: 780,000
Portuguese: 675,000
Source: U.S. Census Bureau 2005 American Community Survey
Top 10 languages at U.S. colleges and universities
A 2002 survey by the Modern Language Association showed the following enrollments* for language classes at U.S. institutions of higher learning:
Spanish: 746,000
French: 202,000
German: 91,000
Italian: 64,000
American Sign Language: 61,000
Japanese: 52,000
Chinese: 34,000
Latin: 30,000
Russian: 24,000
Ancient Greek: 20,000
* Figures rounded to nearest thousand
Sources: Modern Language Association
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