These days, every employee here gets a birthday gift, something a multinational company might be expected to do in this age of feel-good corporate management.

The problem is that people in China do not traditionally celebrate birthdays.

But that is changing. And so is Lenovo. It is trying to become a global company with its purchase of I.B.M’s personal computer business for $1.75 billion, and handing out birthday cakes is just part of the process of evolving into a multinational corporation.

To further globalize the company, however, Lenovo will do something even bolder: it will move its headquarters to Armonk, N.Y., where I.B.M. is based, and essentially hand over management of what will become the world’s third-largest computer maker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to a group of senior I.B.M. executives.

American multinational companies outsource manufacturing to China. Why can’t a Chinese company outsource management to the United States?

Preparations are already under way in Beijing. For the last few months, all vice presidents have been required to study English for at least one hour a day. The chairman says he has read books about Bill Gates and Andrew Grove. And the chief executive of Lenovo has agreed to give up day-to-day management of the company to assume the role of chairman.

Lenovo’s challenge will be to meld radically different corporate cultures.

“Neither culture should be the de facto culture,” said Martin Gilliland, an analyst at Gartner Research. “They have to start a new one. Can they develop a new Lenovo business culture? That’s one of the keys to success.”

And the new language for the company is English, company officials say.

Lenovo officials say they are studying American business history, and the chief executive lists The Harvard Business Review as part of his regular reading.

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Hat tip: Going Global

Blogs, short for Web logs, were the talk of the Net in 2004, so much so tha Merriam-Webster Online named “blog” 2004’s word of the year, based on the number of times it was looked up on the company’s online dictionary.

In Europe and the United States, the market for blogging software is splintered, and no company has a dominant position. But in South Korea, SK Communications’ Cyworld unit has turned a kind of souped-up, community-oriented blogging software into a runaway hit called Cyworld.

Eleven million South Koreans now have a Cyworld “mini-hompy,” or mini home page. This is nearly a quarter of the overall population and a third of the country’s online population. SK Comunications says that about 79 percent of Cyworld users are in their 20s or 30s. In November, the Cyworld Web site attracted 16.8 million unique visits, according to KoreanClick, a research concern, which also estimated that 90 percent of South Koreans in their 20s were members of Cyworld.

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Hat tips: Smart Mobs

In many parts of Latin America, resistance to cultural domination by the United States is often synonymous with a reluctance to learn or speak English. But here, where Salvador Allende was once a beacon for the left, the current Socialist-led national government has begun a sweeping effort to make this country bilingual.

Chile already has the most open, market-friendly economy in Latin America, and the language plan is seen as advancing that process.

The initial phase of the 18-month-old program, officially known as “English Opens Doors,” calls for all Chilean elementary and high school students to be able to pass a standardized listening and reading test a decade from now. But the more ambitious long-term goal is to make all 15 million of Chile’s people fluent in English within a generation.

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Hat tip: Going Global

Chinese companies have revealed their international ambitions as they have merged and bought out foreign partners last year, a trend that peaked with the merger between Lenovo Group and IBM.

Chinese companies have made 326 deals with a total value of 18 billion dollars in the first 11 months of 2004, up from six billion dollars in 2003, a survey by audit firm KPMG showed.

“Such strong growth can be attributed to China’s economic reforms, WTO entry, opening up of the domestic market to foreign investors and strong growth of China’s economy,” KPMG said in a statement.

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German, Thai, English, French, – you name the language, there’s likely to be a volunteer on the Thai vacation island of Phuket speaking it.

[Interpreters] are key aid workers in tsunami-stricken southern Thailand, where people of some 40 nationalities were on vacation when the waves hit.

Many of the multilingual helpers advertise their linguistic skills by writing the languages they speak on their T-shirt for all to read.

“We have just about every imaginable language, from English to this Russian dialect from Kazakhstan,” said Tony Carney, of Louisville, Kentucky, who has been coordinating the Phuket Relief Center’s volunteers.

Carney, an actor and television producer who has been living in Thailand for 13 years, speaks English, Thai, French and Spanish.

Other [interpreters] are tourists, volunteers who flew here to help, and multilingual Thais keen to contribute to the relief effort any way they can.

“Even though I hear a hundred different languages a day, it’s all the same thing, “Let’s help each other,” said Carney.

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Trying to do international business without prior cross-cultural training is a recipe for disaster. But there is more to such training than learning how to order a five-course meal, says Sudipta Dev

When organisations become cross-border entities, cross-cultural factors start affecting every aspect of the business. Whether in multi-cultural teams or in business interactions, the variants of cultural nuances eventually end up affecting the business. Cross-cultural training is conducted by many Indian IT organisations to equip their employees with skills to do business in a global environment. But there is much more to cross-cultural training than a crash course in etiquette or learning how to order a five-course meal; it is about a deeper understanding of the values and ethos that define a culture. However, this starts by understanding one’s own culture and then graduating to understanding and appreciating the differences of another.

Misinterpretations and misconceptions are common when the same situation is viewed differently by people from different cultures. The basis of inter-cultural relations are not about changing other people, but adapting oneself to another culture. In India, while earlier the focus was on training professionals working with software companies on international assignments, today it is an integral part of BPO culture for those personnel who have to interact with overseas clients.

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Arabic, now designated a “strategic” language by the U.S. government, faces unprecedented demand for instruction in schools across America, from kindergarten upwards. Not long ago, Middle Eastern languages comprised only 2 percent of all foreign language classes in the United States, led by Hebrew. Then, a Modern Language Association survey revealed a 92 percent rise in Arabic enrollments between 1998 and 2002 — to 10,600.

While there’s buzz about the high demand for Arabic linguists, the real story lies beyond the headlines. Besides the dramatic rise in Arabic enrollments, government and education leaders are intensely collaborating to foster earlier and sustained study, to build Arabic language capacity and cross-cultural understanding in the United States.

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Miami-based Bela Broadcasting, a Spanish language television programmer and independent station operator, purchased former NBC affiliate KMOH-TV last month from Gannett Communications for $5.25 million to tap the growing Hispanic market in Las Vegas as well as Phoenix.

With Hispanics comprising 26 percent of the valley’s 1.7 million people and spending about $33 million weekly on goods and services, the latest entrant to local Hispanic media further demonstrates the demographic shift in the local market. It’s a shift that has forced advertisers and their agencies to accommodate the swelling niche by servicing it.

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Marketers and advertisers will gather in sunny Miami during April 2005 (6th and 7th) to examine successful strategies being used to reach Hispanic consumers in the USA, at the third annual Innovations in Hispanic Marketing conference. The conference organiser, MFM Trade Meetings, promises addresses from experts in acculturation and market segmentation, brand management and strategic partnerships, as well as entertainment and new media. In case studies and panel presentations, conference speakers will show how many companies are currently increasing market share and deepening brand loyalty among Hispanic audiences. Speakers will come from a range of industries including food & beverage, healthcare, telecom, automotive, consumer goods, retail, cosmetics, consumer electronics, home products, financial services, media and entertainment, internet, transportation, and pharmaceuticals.

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1. Decide you want to be time conscience and organized and commit to it.

2. Remember: Time management means taking care of yourself first. Otherwise, you will be of little value to others.

3. Organize by the week first, then by day. This allows for unexpected items.

4. Develop an action list (calls, e-mails, tasks, actions, errands).

5. Prioritize each category and decide how much time each will receive.

6. Schedule time on a calendar.

7. Track progress by checking off completed tasks.

8. Revise the weekly action list daily.

9. Avoid letting others and extraneous events impose on your plan, unless you believe they are important.

10. Read Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

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Hat tip: Kimberly D. Wells

Christmas is definitely in the air around the globe. And the Christmas buzz has been increasingly welcomed by Chinese people, as internationalization continues to transform the landscape.

Indulging in mouth-watering delights while being swept away by an array of cultural holiday entertainment has become a bit of a rage in big cities such as Beijing now. For many Chinese, the novel idea of “Christmas” has arrived, becoming another welcome and pleasant way to celebrate the country’s “opening up” and development.

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Making sure delegations from European Union member states understand each other when they meet in Brussels is no easy feat.

It is up to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Interpretation to make sure communication at meetings and conferences is smooth.

That was particularly challenging after 10 new member countries joined the EU in May this year, adding nine new official languages to the EU’s existing 11.

For the Directorate-General of Interpretation that involved more than a decade of preparation.

The problem was that professionally-trained interpreters in many of the candidate countries were few and far between.

It was up to the directorate-general – which every day provides between 700 and 800 interpreters for 60 meetings – to develop a pool of skilled people from which to recruit.

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While relief workers rushing to Asia to help deal with the aftermath of the tsunamis will have little time to interact with locals, aid workers who spend more time abroad require special intercultural skills.

…future development workers are taught to change their perspective, to see their own behavior from the perspective of the culture they’ll be working in.

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UFJ Bank customers can now gain access to multilingual automated teller machines and remit money to Brazil with the assistance of a Portuguese-speaking operator via an in-house video phone.

The money remittance service, the first of its kind, was launched at 10 UFJ branches in Shizuoka, Aichi, Gifu and Mie prefectures on Dec. 20 in partnership with Brazil’s largest commercial bank, Banco Bradesco SA.

The new service enables direct transfers between UFJ and Bradesco accounts.

About 200,000 Brazilians of Japanese decent live in the four prefectures.

In a related move, UFJ modified about 4,500 of its ATMs Wednesday to improve access for non-Japanese customers.

Customers can now access ATMs in English, Chinese, Korean or Portuguese.

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The [Korean] Supreme Court said yesterday that starting next year the Ministry of Court Administration will provide interpretation and translation services to foreigners accused in criminal cases.
The ministry will manage the pool of interpreters and translators for courts nationwide and arrange appropriate services for foreign defendants, the court said.
Courts will also tape-record all trials that require interpreters. A foreign defendant is also allowed to raise an objection over interpretation and to request another interpreter for clearer communication.

According to the Supreme Court, 1,291 foreigners were tried in lower courts around the country last year, up from 588 in 2002.

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