Pacific English

One of the reasons I haven’t added to this blog for some time is that I’ve been out of Asia. Now that I’m back I thought I would write an entry about English in the Pacific island nations of Fiji and Tonga. This is slightly off topic, but both have some interesting Asian connections.

Fiji was a British colony from 1874 to 1970. The Union Jack forms part of its flag and Queen Elizabeth appears on its banknotes. Perhaps it is not surprising that most people speak English - but as I have suggested before (e.g. in the April, 2009 entry on the ‘invasion’ of English), the connection between colonialism and language is rarely direct. In the case of Fiji there seem to be several reasons favouring English, some dating to colonial times and others more recent.

The first is that there are two distinct ethnic groups. Nearly 60% are Fijians, who started settling the islands more than 5000 years ago and seem to have come mainly from the Melanesian islands to the west, with others from Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific. About 40% are Indo-Fijians, descended from Indians brought by the British in the 19th century to develop agriculture. Many Indo-Fijians speak some Fijian, a language sharing common origins with Malay based on the dialect of one of Fiji's smaller islands. But few Fijians speak Fiji-Hindi, the main language of the Indians. This means that English is an important bridge between the two groups.

English is also the main language of education. As in many multilingual developing countries, local languages (i.e. Fijian and Hindi) are limited mostly to the early years of elementary school. Although many secondary schools target different ethnic groups (partly because the Indians tend to be Hindu or Muslim whereas the Fijians are nearly all Christian), both teach mostly in English. It is the language of higher education, with many institutions supported by Australia and New Zealand. Some students go to those two countries to further their studies, and others go to the various campuses of the University of the South Pacific (USP), not only in Fiji but also in other Commonwealth nations in the region.

Alongside sugar, Fiji’s most important industry is tourism, with most visitors coming from Australia and New Zealand. Culturally too, with a national obsession with rugby, the country is closely linked to these countries, and thus to their language.

My main interest in visiting Fiji was to look at the legal system. Given the importance of English in other areas, I was not surprised to find the courts using that language for proceedings. Interestingly, every court had a clerk who was fluent not only in English but also in Fijian and often in Hindi too. I never heard a judge speak any language other than English, and the court clerks were kept busy translating for people who did not understand the language so well.

Tonga has just 100,000 people, making it 10% the size of Fiji, and all of them speak Tongan. Although part of the Commonwealth, it was never formally colonised by Britain and has its own royal family. I therefore expected Tongan, which is the national language, to be more important than English.

In general that is probably true. When I went to the Magistrates Court, for example, proceedings were entirely in Tongan. There are now has many Chinese inhabitants (in a scheme to earn foreign currency, over 4000 have been granted citizenship in the last ten years), and two of the cases I saw involved burglaries on Chinese shops. I was expecting the Chinese witnesses to speak Mandarin or English and was surprised that they spoke quite fluently in Tongan.

I also learned that all laws are published in Tongan (as well as English), and that the national language must be used for debate in parliament. However, as in Fiji, English is very important in education. Many schools are run by international Christian organisations and teach in it. Although the University of the Pacific has a local campus, many people seeking a degree have to go overseas. Most lawyers, for example, study at the USP campus in Vanuatu, while others go to Auckland and Sydney.

Despite the use of Tongan in the lower courts, in the higher courts everything is in English. As far as I could tell, everyone in the courtroom except myself and the judge was from Tonga. But if defendants or witnesses spoke in Tongan, it was translated into English. (On the other hand, not everything spoken in English was translated for their benefit into Tongan.) I was given two reasons. First, every Tongan lawyer and judge has trained in English, so it is considered the language of law, except for the simple cases heard in the lower courts. Indeed the barristers look just like their counterparts in London, with wigs and black gowns – except that they wear sarongs and sandals. The second reason is that nearly all the judges are from Australia or New Zealand. I was told this was to prevent corruption: with only 100,000 people, most locals seem to know each other, and so it might be difficult to ensure impartial decisions without using outsiders.

When I looked at some laws written in Tongan I was impressed by how many local words exist for legal and business terms. On closer reading I noticed that many have been adapted from English to the sounds of Tongan. Examples include: Ateni Seniale (Attorney General), komisiona (commissioner), konisitutone (constitution), holoseila (wholesale), lesisita (registration), laiseni (licensing), peilifi (bailiff) and pisinisi (business).

Words vs meaning

I recently read an article in The Economist newspaper about Brazilians and the way they use Portuguese.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/05/brazilians?fb_ref=activity

The writer suggested that when a Brazilian says sim a foreigner would probably think it meant ‘yes’, because that is what it says in the dictionary, but in fact it might also mean ‘maybe’ or even ‘no’. Talvez seems to mean ‘perhaps’ but probably means ‘no’. And Vou aparacer mais tarde doesn’t actually mean ‘I’ll be coming later’ but ‘I won’t be coming at all’.

There were a lot of comments especially from Brazilians. Some readers thought this was negative stereotyping; some gave reasons for saying one thing but meaning another (e.g. to be kind). But most of the Brazilians seemed to agree that they did use this kind of indirect language, but it didn't matter because at least they knew what it meant.

This reminded me of two things. Firstly, of when I invited some Japanese friends and some Brazilian friends to a dinner party many years ago. I asked all of them to come “about 7.30”. The Japanese arrived at 7.15 - when I was still in the shower and hadn’t finished cooking. For the rest of the evening we waited and waited for the Brazilians. They finally turned up at 9.45, just as the Japanese were leaving, and they didn’t think they were late at all.

Secondly,the article also reminded me about, ‘crosstalk’, which I wrote about in this blog quite a while ago. Crosstalk is when people think they understand each other because they understand the words and grammar that are used, but actually fail to grasp the meaning behind the words. This can happen within a culture and between people who speak the same language, but of course it is more likely to happen across cultures and between people who have different first languages.

Anyway, just for fun I wondered what kinds of misunderstandings might occur when people from English-speaking countries visit Asia, or when Asians from one country visit another Asian country. This is not so serious, and you may not agree, but please send any suggestions. I have only referred to three or four languages so perhaps you have some examples in other Asian languages.

I thought of three categories: (1) Things that probably don’t mean what you think they mean; (2) Things that seem similar but are probably different; and (3) Things that seem different but are probably the same.


THINGS THAT PROBABLY DON’T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK THEY MEAN

私にはもったいないです (Japanese)

This looks like "You are too good for me" but it probably means "I am too good for you" and is often said when turning down an invitation of marriage.

はい (Japanese)

This sometimes means "Yes" but sometimes "No' and often "I have no idea but do carry on talking."

日本語御上手ですね (Japanese)

While this seems to mean "You are good at Japanese" it probably means either (1) "Wow! You can say ‘thank you’ in Japanese: that’s amazing for a foreigner!" or (2) "Hmm, your Japanese is not bad for a foreigner. What is wrong with you?!"

没有 (Chinese)

This seems to mean "We don’t have any/ we’ve sold out" but can also mean "I’m too busy/tired/ hungry to serve you." Actually it nearly always used to have the second meaning, especially when you could see the thing you wanted right on the counter, but in the new capitalist China it is not used so often.




THINGS THAT SEEM SIMILAR BUT ARE PROBABLY DIFFERENT

On da way lah! (Malay/Manglish)

This does indeed look very much like "I’m on the way" but is more likely to mean "I have just got home and am going to have a shower. Later I will set out for your the house but I will probably be stuck in traffic for hours.

途中だよ (Japanese)

This also looks like "I’m on the way" but in Japan is more likely to mean "I have already arrived and I am standing outside your door right now."

Pasti sudah siap esok petang (Malay)

This could be translated as "It will definitely be ready by tomorrow afternoon" but really means "I have no idea when it will be ready – perhaps you could call me next month?"

約束できませんが明々後日までに努力します (Japanese)

In Japan this would be said by a service provider very apologetically and suggests "If we are really lucky it just might be ready in four days". What it means is "It will be ready tomorrow morning."

Waa, u pandai cakap Melayu (Malay)

Don't be fooled into thinking this means "You are really good at Malay." It actually means "I don’t really know why you foreigners try speaking Malay when we all speak English but I guess you spent a lot of time in Indonesia."

Pintar bicara Bahasa Indonesia, Pak! (Indonesian)

This ought to mean more or less the same as the previous phrase for Malay but means "It’s really nice that you are trying to speak Indonesian but I’m afraid you sound like a Malay."


THINGS THAT SEEM DIFFERENT BUT ARE PROBABLY DIFFERENT THE SAME

Pergi kemana? (Indonesian = Where are you going?)

お出かけですか (Japanese = Are you going out?)

你出去啊 (Chinese = You’re going out!)

你回来了 (Chinese = You’ve come back!)

下班了吗 (Chinese = You’re home again!)

吃饭了吗 (Chinese = Have you eaten?)

跑步啊 (Chinese = So you are out jogging then!)

All these and many other phrases around Asia have a single meaning: Hello!


Highlighting the indirectness of speech in Asian languages can, of course, lead to the impression that English speakers always say exactly what they mean. Some Asian students are even taught to be as direct as possible when speaking English. But this would be misleading. When an American says 'I could care less!' they always mean 'I couldn't care less'. When an Aussie says 'Well that's a lot of use to me!' they are very likely to mean the opposite. And when a Brit says 'How do you do?' it simply means Hello. It's not an invitation to start telling them about your holiday or your health or your problems at work.

Gaijin, laowai, farang and mat salleh

The other day I was pleased to spot a new restaurant in Tokyo near where I am working since there aren’t too many choices for eating there in the evening – but was immediately disappointed by a sign saying it was off limits to foreigners. Whether trying to be encouraging or humourous I’m not sure, but my colleague commented: Don’t worry, it probably doesn’t mean you!



No Foreigners signs are not unusual in Japan, especially outside bars or in advertisements for apartments to rent. The only law specifically prohibiting racial discrimination is an international one that Japan signed up to in 1995: The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. There is some doubt about whether it has much force, especially since many Japanese laws, such as gender-equality legislation, require people to ‘make efforts’ without punishing them if they don’t. However, it was used successfully in 1999 to obtain compensation for a Brazilian woman who had been refused entry to a shop with a No Foreigners poster on the door. In web forums participated in by foreigners living in Japan, many people express shock at these bans, although some are sympathetic to bar-owners and apartment-owners wanting to avoid the possibility of foreigners getting aggressively drunk or having noisy parties at night and failing to dispose of their rubbish properly.

Replying to a Youtube complaint by Meaphe about her difficulty in finding an apartment, for example, Gimmeaflakeman and Tomoko advise her that it is ‘nothing personal’ and that there are many places that do rent to foreigners – some that rent only to foreigners, indeed.



Debates about whether foreigners should expect the same rules against discrimination in Japan as they have in their own countries, and whether it is better to be openly discriminatory rather secretly so, are interesting, but in this blog on language around Asia I want to concentrate on various words for ‘foreigner’ and what they seem to mean.



Gaijin (外人 – literally ‘outside person’) is one of the first words foreigners learn in Japan. When gaijin were rare, many of them got annoyed to hear this word constantly called out. The old lady who ran the public bathhouse I used when I lived in a provincial city used to address me as gaijin-san whenever she wanted to tell me off for not drying myself off properly as I stood in front of her naked and steamy. In most of Japan today no one notices gaijin much, and most non-Japanese don’t seem to mind the term. However, Arudou Debito, an American-born naturalised Japanese whose campaigns include a lawsuit against a Hokkaido bathhouse that banned all foreigners after having trouble with foreign seamen, believes the term is harmful because of the simplistic way it divides the world between Japanese and everyone else. He uses the example of a group of Japanese tourists he heard in Italy referring to locals – rather than themselves – as gaijin.

My own feeling is that for most Japanese, gaijin are Europeans or North Americans, especially white ones. Asians and Africans are more likely to be called gaikokujin (外国人=outside country person), which sounds more formal but to my ears is less friendly.



This distinction has a parallel in China, where the formal word (also 外国人=wàiguórén) is heard less often by white people than 老外(lǎowài = old outsider). Depending on the context, lǎo can mark respect (老师= old teacher), disrespect (老东西=old fool) or nothing much at all (老虎= a tiger regardless of age), and thus there are frequent discussions about whether lǎowài is acceptable. Like gaijin in Japan, many lǎowài in China use the local term about themselves and prefer it to the suspiciously sweet wàiguópéngyou (外国朋友= foreign friends). Dark-skinned foreigners are more likely to be called (黑人= black person).


Hong Kong and Singapore Chinese have a longer experience of living alongside Europeans than do mainlanders and have a variety of words for them. In Singapore, where the biggest first language is Hokkien, white people are most commonly referred to as angmo (红毛= red hair) and opinion is divided as to whether it is harmless or insulting. The Cantonese term gweilo (ghost man) is considered racist by many people in both Singapore and Hong Kong. I was reprimanded for saying it by an Italian long-term resident of Hong Kong who finds it typifies the deep racial divisions there. Singapore-based blogger Aussie Pete suggests its use in a sports game in Australia would lead to a player being suspended. Yet I often hear foreigners themselves using it. Is it because they don’t know its historical associations, coming in to being when there was great hostility against Europeans? Or is it that by making fun of it they make it less harmful, just as gay people in the 1990s started to use the previously insulting word ‘queer’ about themselves?



The term farang is also used by many farang in Thailand. Its origin may be the same as the word for Frenchman. Like gaijin and lǎowài it refers mostly to white people and there is disagreement about whether it is harmful. Mat salleh, which somehow got transformed from the name of a rebel leader who killed a lot of white colonialists into a name for white people themselves, is generally regarded by both locals and foreigners in Malaysia as harmless and even affectionate. One contributor to a web forum commented that it doesn’t sound so affectionate when referring to noisy, drunken foreigners, however. The same could be said for farang and indeed most of these terms: it depends on what is in the mind of the person who says the word and the one who hears it at the time. I had never thought that Indon was anything more than an abbreviation for Indonesian, for example, until I used it in a text message to an Indonesian friend. He was upset because it is often used by Malaysians to insult Indonesians and there had recently been tension between the two countries.



There will always be terms to group people who are different from ourselves, and sometimes they will be used innocently or affectionately, and sometimes maliciously. Gaijin, lǎowài, farang and mat salleh can be considered part of the English of Asia since they are words used by both foreigners and locals in the English spoken there, but clearly they have a range of meanings and should not be used without some thought. There has always been racism around the world, but when white people start complaining about racism in Asia there must be many Asians who think about the old days when European colonialists put up signs in Shanghai parks saying ‘No dogs or Chinese’. Indeed, Debito didn’t get much sympathy from the largely Chinese and Korean audience when he complained on Japanese TV about discrimination against white people (including white people with Japanese citizenship) in the Hokkaido bathhouse.

As for that sign at the new restaurant in Tokyo, it is interesting that it is in Chinese and Korean, as well as ungrammatical English. Just like the landlady I visited about renting an apartment with a No Foreigners sign, I suspect my colleague was trying to tell me that it does not mean ‘your kind of foreigner’. But I think it will be better if I don’t try to find out what kind of 'foreigner' it does mean.

English Vinglish

Last week, during a night flight from one side of Asia to the other, I was beginning to get annoyed by all the announcements preventing me from sleeping. I realise that certain things have to be announced, such as reminders about seat belts when the air gets bumpy, but I don’t feel the pilot needs to give us all those details about the model of the plane, our altitude and average speed, all the countries we will fly over etc. And I’m sure the flight attendants don’t have to announce the opening and closing of duty-free sales and how to join the airline’s loyalty programme so many times. Since most flights use three languages – those of the departure and arrival points plus English – all these announcements seem to take ages. At such times I even find myself thinking ‘Maybe they should just do them once, briefly - and in English only!’ Unable to sleep, I looked through the films that were being shown. And I found one that reminded me that ‘English only’ is really no solution.

English Vinglish is the first film directed by Gauri Shinde, wife of well-known Indian movie director R. Balki. She also wrote the screenplay and has said the story represents an apology to her mother, who sent her children to English-medium schools so as to give them social and economic advantages but was sometimes laughed at by those very children because of her own poor English. A comedy with a serious message, the film centres on Shashi, a beautiful housewife (played by superstar Sridevi Kapoor) living in India and her middle class family. Her husband conducts business in English. Her daughter, Sapna, attends a posh English-medium school. Even her small son speaks English. But Shashi hardly understands it. She speaks to them in Hindi and they reply in Hindi or in Hinglish, while speaking English among themselves. Her husband is kind but patronising, viewing the catering that she does outside the house as a hobby rather than a serious business.

Sapna makes fun of her mother’s mistakes in English and uses the language to keep her teenage life secret. When her mother is visiting her school, Sapna intervenes in a conversation with a friend’s mother so that she won’t notice Shashi's lack of English. But we can see the anxiety on Shashi’s face when the woman invites her to visit her home.

Then there is a phone call from Shashi’s sister, who has lived in New York for many years. Her daughter is marrying an American boy and the whole family are invited. Shashi is to come to America first to help with the wedding arrangements. While happy for her niece, she is terrified of travelling alone to a foreign country. All her worst fears come true when she goes into the centre of New York for the first time, tries to buy something to eat and drink at a busy café, and is mocked by the rude and impatient waitress.

The turning point in the story is when Shashi sees an advert promising to teach English in only three weeks – which is how long she has before her family arrives for the wedding. She starts secretly attending the classes, learning how to ride the subway and get around the city on her own. The class includes a Pakistani taxi driver who says he needs English to get a better job and find a wife; an Indian software engineer who is made fun of at his workplace; and a French cook who falls madly in love with Shashi. She turns out to be the hardest-working student and is very sad when she discovers she won’t be able to take her final exam because it clashes with the wedding – one of many conflicts in the story between her need to educate herself and her desire to look after her family. But in the end the students and the teacher all come to the wedding. To her family’s amazement, Shashi gives a touching speech for her niece in slow but competent English and her teacher announces that she has passed the course with distinction. Her daughter and husband feel ashamed about how they have undervalued her and the film ends with a grand song and dance number – this is Bollywood, after all.

This could easily have been just the story of a woman’s efforts to ‘improve’ herself. Instead, the director makes it clear that we should never assume that being successful is the same thing as knowing English. From the start it is clear that Shashi is very talented. As well as her famous cooking she entertains her son with dance impressions. In English she is shy and hesitant, but given the chance to cook, or to dance, she shines. At school, Sapna’s friend’s mother finds her charming, and when she meets Sapna’s teacher, he is the one who feels ashamed: Shashi apologetically asks if they can talk in Hindi. After all, it is the national language in a country where fluent English speakers are a small, if influential, minority.) But he is from the non-Hindi south and speaks it poorly, and Shashi has to help him with his grammar. When she is being interviewed for her visa at the US consulate, an American official asks her how she will manage in America with such poor English - but his colleague points out that the American manages well enough in India without speaking Hindi.

In New York too we see that English is not everything. The teacher of the English class does not appear to be a very knowledgeable character. In a conversation after class, the students conclude that they are probably smarter than the people they work for – except for their poor English. We also see the Hindi speakers getting a chance to turn the tables on the English speakers when they gently tease the niece’s American boyfriend. Finally, when the family is flying back to India, Shashi asks the flight attendant, in confident English, if she can have a newspaper. A Hindi newspaper. I find it rather interesting that one of India's biggest stars was chosen for this relatively small movie, but perhaps Sridevi herself could see its importance. A native Tamil speaker, she has acted in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. And now English too - which, it turns out, she speaks much more fluently in real life than the character she plays in English Vinglish.

Smart input

The early development of software for emailing, web-surfing and texting in Asian languages was hindered by the variety and complexity of writing systems. Asia has by far the largest share of the world’s scripts. These include ideographs (traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, simplified Japanese); syllabaries (Japanese, Korean); complex alphabets (Tamil, Thai ); alphabets written from right to left (Arabic, Hebrew) or top to bottom (Mongolian); and adaptations of the Roman alphabet with special diacritics (Vietnamese). Several languages have changed their scripts, such as Kazakh, which used Arabic characters until these were replaced by Cyrillic under the Soviet Union, and is now being written more and more in Roman letters. Different software programmes encoded scripts in different ways, and so even if you could write your native language on one computer you could not necessarily do it on another.

This problem has largely been solved by the development of Unicode, which assigns a unique number to each character. Adopted by global companies such as Adobe, Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft, it is supported by most web-browsers and important programming languages like Java. Thanks to Unicode, Balinese and Cambodians can word-process in their traditional scripts. Characters added in 2007 include the Tibetan /rra/, archaic digits found in Sinhala texts, and the Sundanese script. Bhutanese can write Dzongka using Tibetan-based software.

Although it is now possible to write almost any Asian language, some people still feel that to use a computer it is necessary to know the Roman alphabet, and preferably, the English language. A few years ago I met a student in Lahore in Pakistan, for example, who regretted not being able to email his father down in Karachi because the latter did not know English.

One reason for the continued association between English and computing is the way people originally learnt to use technology. I have several Thai friends who started using computers when the only available programmes were in English, and they became so used to using English for emails that some of them continue to do so, even when writing to Thais. Of course they all know that it is possible to write Thai on a computer, but some of them tell me that it is still quicker for them to use English. Perhaps it is because we only need about 30 keys for English (the 26 letters and the space-bar, return key etc.) whereas to write the 70+ letters of the Thai alphabet nearly every key on the keyboard must be used both in lower case and in upper case mode.

However, even where people decide to use Roman-script input, difficulties may arise because of all the different romanisation systems. Whereas these are relatively minor in Japanese (sho vs syo, for example, or tsu vs tu), the pinyin favoured by China and Wade-Giles system preferred in Taiwan can produce discrepancies such as Gaoxiung vs Kaohsiung and gong fu vs kung fu. The name pronounced /ri/ in Korean can be Li, Lee or Rhee. In Thailand almost every language school seems to have its own way of Romanising the national language – which is very frustrating for foreigners trying to learn it. Japanese has only 50 syllaberies (in two forms of kana: hiragana and katakana) and the keyboard of most Japanese computers (including the one I am writing this on) can easily cover them if we include the number keys in shift mode. Nevertheless, all the Japanese I know input their writing in Roman letters, even though the output appears in a mixture of Chinese characters and kana. This is the same with Chinese. Nearly all Chinese computer users input pinyin (the Roman alphabet adapted to Chinese sounds) to obtain a large choice of characters appear on the screen. We can therefore say that even if Thais and Koreans can do without Roman letters, Chinese and Japanese cannot.

As for writing messages and emails on telephones, this has changed dramatically since the spread of smartphones, which have keyboards similar to computers. A few years ago there used to be competitions for writing messages using the number pads only, and some people – especially young women – seemed to be amazingly fast. Their speed was enhanced by predictive spelling, which anticipates and tries to complete what you are about to write before you have finished it, and this software was especially advanced for Japanese. If I write Japanese on my old phone it is much quicker for me to use Roman-character input than kana input (but of course it is quicker still if I can write in English). In fact, even though I have been using a smartphone for over a year, I still carry my old phone sometimes (for example, when I go jogging), and I think I can input just as fast on its number pad than I can on my smartphone’s keyboard – especially since I find the latter too small for my fingers and often make mistakes!

Many of my older Thai friends use Roman script input on their phones even if they write Thai. Some of them who are using older phones say that it is almost impossible to input Thai characters on a phone because every number key needs to support about seven different characters. Even some Thais with smartphones input using Roman script for the same reason that they do so on their computers – they find an alphabet of 26 letters easier than one of over 70. One friend told me that another reason for inputting in Roman letters is because it is cheaper. He added that since most Thais cannot read Thai written in Roman letters, he tends just to write in English. Another Thai friend told me that even though she usually writes in Thai and she uses Thai character input to do so, she mixes her Thai messages with a lot of English words and expressions. However, I hear that a lot of younger Thais are now texting using Thai characters. I don't know if they add Roman characters (e.g. btw, CUl8r) or English expressions (YES, OK), but I do know that this is quite common among young Chinese and Japanese.

There is no doubt that it is now much easier than before to use Asian scripts on computers and phones. But this brings up a question: what happens when people whose language is written in a complex script such as Chinese characters do not have their computer or phone available? I know in my own case that although it is pretty easy for me to write in Japanese on my computer, if I have to write a letter by hand, or write something on the blackboard, I often find that I suddenly cannot remember how to write certain characters – even quite easy ones that I would never forget how to read. Of course I did not learn Japanese when I was young, so it is inevitable that the characters are not as firmly embedded in my head as they are for Japanese people. But some Japanese friends tell me that they too sometimes forget how to write a character when they don’t have their computer. However, since Japanese is written in a mixture of Chinese and kana (and even roman script), if you don’t know a character you can generally write it phonetically.

But as far as I know, if you forget a Chinese character it doesn't look very good if you just write it in pinyn. So I wonder what Chinese people do when they forget a character? Or maybe they never forget?

Technical support

Last month I wrote about call centres. One of the jobs many call centre employees have is to provide technical support for people who can’t assemble or operate some product. In many cases they are providing English-language support for consumers who have bought products made in Asia. China now dominates the production of all kinds of electronic equipment and this has generated a huge demand for technical translators, with English the language most needed. But the English instructions that come with products are often baffling (“For safety reasons do not put the air-conditioning in the chicken”) as well as sometimes being entertaining (“Please to insert card in your mother’s board.”).

As a general rule, translation should be done from a foreign language into the translator’s own language, but the rapid pace of Chinese economic growth, and the lack of English-speakers learning Chinese (in comparison with Chinese learning English) means that mostof the English translation is done by Chinese, and some if it is not very good. Of course this is not just a Chinese problem. Not so long ago I was staying at a hotel in Nagoya and the instructions for using the TV were: It is able to be seeing of the program of the favorite by pushing ground D button and pushing the channel button in the TV operation part when switching from the room theater to the TV screen. This was clearly produced using translation software and somehow I worked it out. In fact I should add that I generally find both the English and the Japanese instructions for Japanese products much better than their British or American ones. I should also mention that my mother, who did not learn to use a computer until she was 70, found the advice she received from a call centre based in India extremely clear.

Of course translation software, such as Googletranslate, has improved greatly. But just like an old-fashioned dictionary, it has to be used carefully and intelligently, and is likely to lead to disastrous results if used by someone who doesn’t know the language they are attempting to translate at all. Asia’s achievements in both hardware and software production seem all the more impressive when we consider the language barriers that have had to be overcome. Much of the technology in use today was originally developed by scientists working in English.

The first modern computers (Iowa State University’s Atanasoff and the University of Pennsylvania’s ENIAC) were built in the United States. Briton Tim Berners-Lee has been credited with inventing the worldwide web. The first text message was sent in the UK. A lot of technology has also been developed by scientists who were not native English-speakers yet worked mainly in that language. Thus the generation of Asians that started to use personal computers in the 1980s or send text messages in the 1990s tended to do so in English. But now Asians lead the world in both software and hardware production.

Call Centres

Recently I’ve been having one or two problems concerning a bank account I have in Britain. I have several numbers for the bank that look like British phone numbers. But whenever I call, I am answered by someone in a call centre in India. This has caused me some difficulties since the problem I have really needs to be resolved by someone who is actually in the UK, yet none of the people in India seem to be able to give me a contact number for anyone in Britain. However, I hasten to add that the people at the call centre themselves are quite competent and I can certainly understand their English. Indeed it is often easier for me to understand them than people in certain parts of Britain where they have a distinct regional accent. Because salaries for Indian companies are still relatively low, call centres there which serve international companies tend to attract employees with excellent English and high educational backgrounds.

Offshore call centres (or contact centres) are the best-known face of business process outsourcing (BPO), a rapidly growing global phenomenon whereby companies transfer work to somewhere with lower labour costs. Outsourcing may be onshore: many Japanese companies, for example, use call centres in Okinawa where wages are lower than in Tokyo or Osaka. But they save even more money if they offshore services to China, where it is increasingly possible to find workers fluent in Japanese. Asian countries that have high levels of English are particularly well-placed to attract outsourced work from the huge number of companies doing business in that language. According to India’s Economic Times, BPO is now moving into higher-value KPO: ‘knowledge process outsourcing’. In the Philippines, the work done by call centres includes software development, animation for Hollywood feature films, and transcription of legal and medical documents. If you check a job-recruitment website such as mynimo.com you will find hundreds of positions being advertised for dozens of BPO and KPO offices in Cebu City alone. The Philippines has even been getting work from India.

In India itself, a growing outsourced business is tutoring for children. In the United States, face-to-face tutoring for a high school student can cost up to $100 an hour, whereas an online tutor based in India can be found for as little as $2.50. Bangalore-based Tutor Vista has 150 tutors advising 1,100 children in America. Parents pay $100 per month for unlimited hours. Tutors have an average of ten years of teaching experience behind them, most have master’s degrees, and they get 60 hours of training in American accents and young people’s slang. Rival company Growing Stars Inc. teaches subjects like elementary school maths, science and English grammar and high school algebra and calculus to over 400 American students.

Call centres around the world are often manned by young, single workers who don’t mind working at night. According to Kingsley Bolton, a sociolinguist at Hong Kong's City University, in many Asian countries the job tends to appeal to middle class females who have few safe and socially acceptable work options.Women are often thought to have better language skills and more empathy when dealing with difficult customers. Bolton’s research in the Philippines also found a disproportionate number of gay and transsexual employees who, he speculates, may be attracted to a job that can entail an element of role-play: as long as it facilitates business, phone operatives can be whoever their clients imagine them to be.

This role-playing is highlighted in One Night at the Call Centre, a novel by investment banker Chetan Bhagat that sold over 100,000 copies within a month of its release in India in 2006. The story takes place over a single night at an Indian call centre servicing American appliance users. The main characters have false American names (Shyam is “Sam”, Radhika is “Regina”) and loathe having to be servile to customers they consider less intelligent and educated than themselves. Their instructor advises them to think of 35-year-old Americans as having the same IQ as a 10-year-old Indian.

Nowadays nearly everyone knows that a call to New York or Sydney may well be answered in Chennai or Cebu, so the call centre workers don’t need to pretend that they are anywhere they are not. Last time I called my bank I had a nice chat with a man called Sayed about a local Muslim holiday in southern India. He promised to call me back after the holiday with good news about my enquiry – but I am still waiting!