Basically I have seen a number of intercultural incidents. I will briefly talk about 3 of them. The first one is an incident between my Chinese friend and an American tourist. We were in town and was approached by this tourist who need some directions. He has some sort of slang that is so hard to understand what he was trying to ask. My friend ended having to apologies and repeatedly ask more about what he was trying to get to. This tourist was patient enough to repeat his question ample times and each time trying his best to make it clear and concise so that my friend could understand
I went to watch this movie titled "mad about English". This movie was about people in Beijing trying to learn English as they anticipated a large of foreign visitors during the Olympics games. The taxi company employed teacher to teach the taxi drivers how to communicate with foreigners using English. The movie show how one of the main character who is a taxi driver making use of what he has learned to greet and chat with his passengers in English. Every time when he doesn’t understand what the foreigner is trying to put across to him, he will reply, “Okay okay”.
Last summer holidays I was in Jakarta, Indonesia on a holiday’s trip to visit my friend. I planned to have a haircut at a hair salon in the hotel shopping center. I saw the pricelist which was in English so I assume that they will understand English. I walked into the hair salon and asked for a haircut and hair treatment to come along. I ended up having to use hands sign to let them know that I wanted a haircut and I wanted a hair treatment as well but they do not understand. I ended bringing that hair dresser to the pricelist and pointing to the hair treatment words and prices.
In most of this cases, I think we need to be more patient and empathetic so that peolpe can understand more easily.
Arduous Journey of ES2007S
15 years ago
7 comments:
More patience and more empathy. Yes, that's a simple prescription that would go a long way in reducing intercultural confusion.
But how to instill that in people?
It requires some degree of altruistic spirit and trust in a complete stranger.
One way to instill empathy and patience in people is to be a walking example for them to learn from? When you receive kindness from a stranger, you are more likely to pass on the kindness? That is what I would like to believe will happen.
However, it requires a leap of faith to trust a total stranger.
I’ve witness a similar scenario as portray in the movie on the bus. I believe that we need to give these people time to pick up another language. They have been speaking mandarin their whole lives and it is definitely not an easy task to pick up another language. I guess what we could do is to lend a helping hand (if we are capable) in order to reduce this kind of confusion.
In Beijing, I have came across all salesgirls in a market speaking simple English while pitching to sell their clothes and souvenirs. I was amazed. They might speak better than some of the students studying in China university. I believe they must have gone through English courses to cater for foreigners during Olympics games.
Patience and empathy are innate property of human. Everyone has these qualities but degree of highness may be different. Furthermore, there are other factors such as environmental influence or education system that play some roles in affecting those. For example, a busy working person wouldn't be patient with you simply because time is not enough. However,if he's discussing with his superior, he definitely will show his tolerance towards everything. Therefore, if a person view something very important, he will be very patient else he will suffer the consequences.
What could we do about such cases that occur so frequently?
Communicating with others that cannot speak our language seems to be one of the biggest barriers in communication. It is also one of the key reasons why I do not like travelling to places with languages I do not understand like Japan, Korea and Thailand. It makes me feel very out of place and lost.
How do you think I can overcome this problem?
Hi jason! This is an interesting post! I also have similar experience in helping foreigners figure out their way. Patience is really the key when it comes to communicating with people from foreign lands, and patience has to come from both parties. However, sometimes time is not on your side, like for the taxi driver and the passenger case. Effective communication has a time limit in that sense. I remembered when i went over to bangkok july this year, it was so scary being in the foreigner's role. The taxi driver only knows how to speak thai and the sign boards on the roads are mainly in thai with very few english words. We had difficulty getting to our ulu budget hotel from the airport simply because the taxi driver doesn't know where is the hotel and we can't exactly speak thai. I got so scared and i felt so lost like i've just gotten myself into a big sea. Thank god for GPS, a rakkie boyfriend and a few of the thai words he picked up from a travel guide before we went. We eventually got to our hotel. I think it is hard to overcome this barrier but if there is an interest in exploring a foreign land, one should make an effort to pick up the common language spoken by the local people in order to survive and enjoy your stay there. Anyhow, it can be fun when a chicken trys to communicate with a duck. At least we had fun chatting with the "tuk tuk" driver in bangkok =)
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