Dr. Richard Brecht, executive director of the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language, gave a luncheon keynote address at the University of Maryland's School of Business:
Industry hasn't confronted the language problem, and if you want to be globalized, Brecht claims, you need to be plural lingual: able to deal with people in many languages and cultures. Friedman, he says, doesn't put enough emphasis on the importance of language in his observations.
Brecht says that the only real globalized workforce in America is the U.S. Military. With the Defense Language Transformation Roadmap initiative, the Department of Defense, Brecht says, was the first employer to focus on human capital and create a truly globalized workforce, requiring all levels of officers to have a second language; in turn offering monetary, posting, and advancement incentives. "Every leader must be linguistically competent," says Brecht applauding the military initiative. He urges business leaders to follow suit - leading by example when it comes to language learning by their workforce.
Brecht says that knowing the language of the place where you want to do business is the first step, but, "if you don't know the culture where you are marketing then you aren't going to succeed." You need to practice in the culture with the language - the "localization" component. You can't say that you know the Chinese culture if you don't know Mandarin and practice it in that culture, says Brecht. It's all about language and interaction - you will always be a voyeur, and get only half of the story, if you rely on interpreters.
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