Imagine a situation like this: you are fifteen years old, it is a warm day, and you travel to Germany with your father in his big car. You want to feel carefree and enjoy your summer trip but you cannot. All you know is that you have a responsible task ahead of you. The amount of stress is overwhelming because it is likely that you will have to improvise. Why? Because you are the only person in the entire family who can speak English and German “fluently enough” to negotiate the price of a car and discuss other matters while simultaneously translating the answers into Polish. Sounds difficult, doesn’t it? Now imagine that such a situation repeats several times over the course of ten years, as the used-car dealership business is prospering. You have plenty of opportunities to work on your practical skills and learn to overcome this irritating language barrier. Eventually, you feel that you have progressed as you are no longer scared of making a conversation with foreigners. Having been part of this practice for over a decade now, I can say that this experience taught me even more than being able to communicate in another language. Primarily, I realised that being an owner of a small business comes with enormous responsibility, especially if you cooperate with overseas companies. With all due respect to my family members who are engaged in pushing the business forward, I feel that they forgot about something in the process. Their regular trips abroad have always been marked by communication breakdowns of similar nature. Some were minor, some rather significant, but the fact that such problems occurred is related to the very limited knowledge and inability to express their needs or ask questions in a correct way. As a child, I witnessed the process of negotiation countless number of times, and I can remember that they used single words and numbers with no grammar structures at all. Nothing has changed through the years and German is still the only language they attempt to speak in. They are very confident, though, and this is what I bear in mind while learning languages. I wanted to be helpful but at the same time, I could not understand why they would not make any effort to progress. When I asked, I received a short reply that they were already too old to study and had more important things to do. That is understandable, for business requires much more than that, and yet I have to argue. These days, people can easily get in touch with everyone around the world since the technology is so highly advanced. It frequently requires the ability to speak at least one foreign language, but you can also use Google Translator or other tools when communicating online. This is how my family often deals with advertisements and messages from dealers based in other countries. In real life, however, using a translator of this kind can be unreliable, particularly in a business environment. Besides, let’s face it – once you have learnt another language, you can use it in any context you want, be it in tourism, in everyday life abroad, or at work. If you do not know what to do in your free time, maybe studying a new language is a good option?
Artykuł opublikowany w ramach konkursu pisarskiego „Język w biznesie i życiu”
Autor: Aleksandra Anioł