One of the things that my company, the Biggest Little Software Company in the World, has been doing lately is moving workload from computer centers in the United States to ones in other countries. As a result of that, there have been people calling in to meetings from Brazil. They're treated just like anyone else, but there is one big difference: some of them don't speak English very well. Horribly, in fact: its almost impossible to figure out what they're saying.
That bothered me. Not that they didn't speak it well, but that we weren't doing anything to make it easier for them. I wasn't sure exactly what we could do, though, so I dropped an email to one of the people in Brazil, to get her opinion.
Bad move.
She said that this was their only opportunity to speak English, that doing so was a requirement of their jobs, and that if I would identify who was particularly difficult to understand, she would inform their manager that that person needed additional English training. She didn't care for the thought that perhaps some of us ought to be trying to learn their language, just to be able to understand how tough it was, not to mention, to learn some phrases that might help the conversational flow.
Me no speaka engrish, you bet.
No comments:
Post a Comment