What Bruce said . . . .

Don't patronize the French speakers or any others in the transaction of international business.
Clarity of thought and technical description is pivotal in business language. That is why English
is the world's official business language. But, OTOH, as Bruce suggested, German can be used to a
limited extent. German words are pictographic expressions constructed from English; such as
brassiere translates to "holdsemfromfloppin" and etc.

Bob Swinney

"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:12:43 -0500, "Joe AutoDrill"
wrote:

We are receiving a good number of business inquiries from the French
speaking portion of Canada. Would love to work with anyone here who can
speak the language.

We will "hold your hand" during the process and quote directly to you for
the customer. You would get a distributor or OEM discount from AutoDrill
and we would send French speaking customers to you when necessary.

Basic knowledge of machinery would be good. Knowledge about drilling,
reaming, tapping, etc. all a plus.

Thoughts? Interest?

Google translate works for me with the basic jobs, but anything beyond the
basics needs a real live person IMHO.

My opinion? They are customers and potential customers, sure, so you
do your level best to work with them and fulfill their needs - even go
take a French course and/or hire someone bilingual. But if they
insist on not even knowing functional conversational English, they're
being insular and obstinate and want to be patronized, and I would be
very hesitant in doing the patronizing...

I don't like being knowingly put in the position of being pwned. It's
never a fun place to be. Make them meet you halfway.

The vast majority of the Quebecois were born and raised in Canada,
an English Speaking Country. Yet their parents were on a "Quebecois
Uber Alles!" kick and either didn't teach them English or instilled a
hatred of Those Other People and encouraged them to hide the knowledge
and not use it.

Hey, Quebec! France is 8,000 miles over that-a-way. ----

(But I'll bet you already knew that, and it's why you are in North
America. Suck it up and join the rest of the club, we speak English
as our first language, and that's what the government operates on.)

It's a very convenient dodge - if you want money from some people, the
easy response is "No Se Habla Ingles!" and they walk away. And
without proof to the contrary, or knowledge of their native language,
you have to let them. Offer to hand *them* money though, and all of a
sudden they display perfectly functional English language skills. Gee,
who'd have thunk it?

Write the contract in English and get it translated for their
convenience - but they sign the English copy.

Besides, the "romance languages" are wonderful for making romance,
but totally lousy for conducting business. Only in French or German
can it take a whole paragraph or an atrocious 100-letter compound word
construct (Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!) to describe something
simple like "computer" or "cellphone" or "PDA" - which is why you
often see them reverse-adopting the English term or acronym with a
French or German suffix tacked on.

-- Bruce --