While covering the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston a few years ago, I was surprised to encounter one of my neighbors at a press conference. He owns a steamship company and was in the company of several clients from Viet Nam. Before leaving, he handed me his business card.
It was printed with all his pertinent business information in English—with no abbreviations—and on the other side was the same information in Vietnamese.
Last year I was editing an article on the Caspian Sea area written by a consultant who works in that region, and he also gave me a bilingual business card—printed in English and Russian.
These cards represent a small, but important, facet of doing business with companies from other cultures, and it is a savvy businessman or woman who does thorough homework to learn the language, customs, and culture of other countries before venturing there. Dinner conversations are rife with chuckles over gaffes of those who failed in this pursuit.
Name games
For instance, one businessman tried to impress his Chinese hosts by memorizing all three names of each member of the company's board. He remembered each, pronouncing them correctly, but failed to understand that, in Chinese, the first of the three names is actually the surname and the last name is the individual's given name. So he spent the afternoon offending them by being too familiar, addressing them as the equivalent of "Mr. (Joe, Tom, etc.)."
In Thailand, the names run the same way, but Thais actually prefer the friendlier "Mr. (given name)" or "(given name)-san," according to Roger E. Axtell, editor of "Do's and Taboos Around the World," a guide to international behavior (1993, third edition, John Wilcy & Sons Inc.).
However, Taiwanese who have been educated in missionary schools often take a Christian first name before their other names, i.e., Danny Ho Chen, and prefer "Danny Ho."
In the Koreas, it gets more interesting, with the name that takes the "Mr." determined by whether a man is his father's first or second son.
And in Latin America, most people's surnames are usually a combination of the father's and the mother's, with only the father's used in conversation. So Juan Garza-Rodriguez would be Juan Garza.
But in Portuguese-speaking Brazil, it is the reverse, with the mother's name first: Juan Rodriguez.
One Russian OGJ author signed his name one way, gave a different, combined form of it in his byline, and listed three different forms of his name on his stationery. We are still scratching our heads on that one. When in doubt, we find that it is always best to ask what someone prefers to be called.
Faux pas, anyone?
Names are not the only differences among various cultures. Customs acceptable in one country could be highly offensive in another. For example, while it is acceptable for a man to cross a leg over one knee in many countries, his showing the bottom of his shoe to Arabs in Middle East countries is a grave insult. So is offering them a business card (or anything else) with the left hand, or eating with the left hand, especially from a shared dish.
Hand gestures and other body language also can get people into trouble. The "OK" sign Americans make by forming a circle with the thumb and middle finger, for example, is considered an obscene gesture in Brazil and Germany. Pointing at someone in Middle East countries also is insulting because that is how they call dogs. Waving with the whole hand has the same effect.
Customary gift-giving, especially in Japan, is an art, and ignorance of the correct protocol can result in offense, defeating the purpose of the gift: Gifts should be wrapped, but never in white paper (which represents death), and one never gives four of anything (again a sign of death). One also should not give the same type of gift to people of differing rank.
Learning new cultures
For employees to be effective as company representatives abroad, many energy corporations are training expatriates and their families in the basic mores and manners of the countries in which they will be working. Expats learn about local customs and foods, appropriate table manners and dress, comportment, suitable gifts and when to give them, and which actions could offend in specific locales. They also teach relevant health and safety issues.
It starts with those effective bilingual business cards and knowing how to greet international business associates properly.
