Verztec Consulting's Official Blog

By Lianhe Wanbao dated 15th January 2012

Yet another blooper has appeared in the Singapore Tourism Board’s (STB) promotional material.

Omy’s tech blogger Lin De Yi wrote yesterday that he had discovered Singapore’s Chinese New Year being called “China’s New Year” on STB’s Chinese language website.

Lin noted that STB had made a similar blooper a few years ago, when it translated the Hungry Ghost Festival to “Hungary Ghost Festival”.

And he goes on to lament that Singaporeans are thus celebrating festivals from Hungary and China, instead of our own.

Many netizens agreed with Lin, and are questioning STB’s processes.

Adding to the mis-written festival, another netizen also pointed out that “Chinatown” on the STB website was wrongly translated to “Tang Ren Jie” (Chinese Street), a commonly used name for the Chinatowns in other countries.

Singapore’s Chinatown is named “Niu Che Shui” (Buffalo Street).

On the most recent blooper, veteran DJ Huang Wen Hong feels that it reflects STB’s attitude.

He said, “Singapore has no lack of bilingual talent. This reflects STB’s attitude. Maybe they feel that the translations are targeted towards foreigners and not Singaporeans, so they didn’t take it seriously.”

Local businessman Mr Hong Ding Liang feels that the translation was probably done by new immigrants.

“Locals will respect our sovereignty and not translate Chinese New Year to China’s New Year”, he said.

On the translation of “Chinatown”, both say that they are not satisfied with the translation but it is acceptable as the article was written with foreigners in mind.

But both feel that Chinatown’s actual name “Niu Che Shui” should still be noted in the article.

The STB website has since corrected “China’s New Year” to “Chinese New Year”. As of press time, no changes were made to the name of “Chinatown”.

Article Reference Source from Lianhe Wanbao

By Kyle Lagunas HR Market Analyst, Software Advice

Kyle Lagunas is the HR Analyst at Software Advice. On the surface, it’s his job to contribute to the ongoing conversation on all things HR. Beyond that, he makes sure his audience is keeping up with important trends and hot topics in the industry. Focused on offering a fresh take on points of interest in his market, he’s not your typical HR guy. Find out more about him at his blog Software Advice.

Soft skills – those oh-so-important qualities such as adaptability, critical thinking and creativity – are what’s needed to bridge the gap between good and great employees. Unlike with black-and-white technical skills, however, these types of competencies often fall in a gray area of subjectivity. Given the value organizations place on soft skills, it’s essential for human resource (HR) managers to regularly assess their soft skills training programs.

Creating objective ways to measure things that are really subjective, however, can be a serious challenge. There are some things to keep in mind when measuring soft skills programs, and also a few tools that can simplify information gathering and analysis.

Three Keys to Successful Skills Measurement

Leadership needs data that illustrates the value of soft skills training programs. As such you need to identify what matters most to your organization, and there are a few key factors that will help you in uncovering the most actionable information:

●     Determine what you’ll be measuring. It’s important that your organization clearly defines which soft skills are most important, and your company’s core values should guide this discussion closely. For instance, if your organization values internal succession then ensuring employees have the right types of leadership development and mentoring would be critical.

●     Get leadership on board. Rolling out a measurement strategy will be an uphill battle with little payoff unless you have a unified front. Establish clarity and alignment at the outset, as this measurement process will require buy-in across the board.

●     Keep it simple and focused. It’s best to start small and focus measurement around one or two competency areas. The soft skills most essential to your organizations’ specific goals are the best place to start.

Customer & Employee Relations a Good Place to Start

There are two tried-and-true facets of your organization that offer a good starting place to identify areas for improvement. In order to determine where employees need further training, ask two simple questions:

●     Are customers happy and coming back? Efforts to provide customers with the service that keeps them coming back may require some intensive company-wide customer service training, particularly in areas such as conflict resolution or active listening. If leadership is looking to measure how soft skills deliver return on investment (ROI), this is a great place to start gathering actionable data.

●     Do employees have what they need to succeed? Not surprising, it’s important to understand how your employees feel day to day – and I’m not just talking about general job satisfaction. If your people aren’t happy, it’s bound to show in the way they relate to your customers and to each other – which might be an indication that you’re investing in the wrong areas.

Surveys to Software: Gathering & Reviewing Data

Many organizations rely on traditional performance reviews to measure employees’ soft skills competency. Additionally, focus groups and surveys also offer an opportunity to gather feedback specifically about your soft skills training programs. These data sources combined can be used to begin formulating a baseline of how employees are doing in key areas.

By providing actionable data on key areas – retention rates, time to proficiency, cost per employee, etc. – analytics tools found in many talent management systems go a long way in illustrating benchmarks that your business leaders can understand and appreciate. They offer organizations the ability to gather hard data and identify changes and trends in the workforce – areas that can be tracked to soft skill competencies and development.

Regardless of the type of tool used, though, the point here is that you gather the data. With this information, you can then explore questions, such as: Are you seeing increased employee retention? What improvements are these initiatives having on performance and productivity? Starting small and remaining focused helps, as does a healthy dose of patience and perseverance.

Article reference source from Software Advice.

Verztec is proud to be one of the esteemed winners of the Promising SME 500 award.

The Promising SME 500 award recognizes business excellence in Asia. Awardees are chosen based on a list of stringent judging criteria which includes assessing businesses for astute leadership, use of innovation to create more value for the business and clients alike, consistent business performance, positive ground sentiments and potential for further growth.

Thank you for your continuous support!

Visit the Promising SME 500 website for more information.

In the third and final part of this series where we examine how similar-sounding words can carry completely different meanings in other languages, we take a look at celebrity names and some unfortunate brand names.

Suri Cruise, the daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, has a name which means ‘red rose’ in Persian. However, people in Japan and France may find her name unflattering as it means ‘pickpocket’ and ‘turn sour’ in Japanese and French respectively.

‘Portia’, the name of a Shakespearean character in Julius Caesar and also the name of Ally McBeal star Portia de Rossi, may sound elegant, but it also translates as pig in Latin.

While the chances of people named Suri or Portia getting ridiculed in other countries due to their names are low, the same cannot be said of brand names, especially if companies decide to take their brand abroad.

Gerber is a famous brand of baby food, but its name is also the French word for vomiting. Thus, it is not available in French-speaking cities. In fact, even though it has a French Canadian website, there is a disclaimer “Les aliments pour bébés Gerber ne sont disponibles pour l’instant qu’aux États-Unis” (French for: The baby food isn’t here, try the U.S.).

Clairol introduced a curling iron named ‘Mist Stick’ in Germany without realizing that ‘mist’ is also a German slang term for manure.

An Italian brand of mineral water named ‘Traficante’ unfortunately shares the same term as ‘drug dealer’ in Spanish.

All these humiliating blunders could have been avoided if those companies had sought the professional opinion of a localization service provider to provide an understanding of the linguistic and cultural preferences of the target market.

Don’t follow the footsteps of these now-notorious brands and jeopardize your marketing plans. Speak to a localization service provider today!

Previously, we talked about words which have a different meaning in another language. Sometimes, when brands decide to launch their product in a foreign market, they neglect localization branding consulting. This can lead to marketing catastrophes as this blog post will show you.

Heard of General Motors’ Chevy Nova? It’s one of the urban legends often quoted as a marketing gaffe. Nova means star in English. The story goes that when this particular car model was launched in Latin America, it was a huge failure as nova means ‘no go’ in Spanish. This was an especially embarrassing branding mistake for a vehicle. While this story has been debunked as a myth, this is a situation that is very real.

The following list shows cars with actual names that have very inappropriate connotations in another language:
• Mazda LaPuta – in Spanish: ‘whore’
• Nissan Moco – in Spanish: ‘booger’
• Opel Ascona – in Spanish and Portuguese: ‘female genitalia’.
• Daihatsu Charade – in English: ‘pretence’
• Dodge Swinger – in English: slang for ‘wife-swapper”
• Fiat Uno – in Finnish: “stupid”
• Ford Fiera – in Spanish: “ugly old woman”

These oversights have made these automobile manufacturers the butt of many jokes, but more damagingly, it also highlights how these large corporation neglect taking cultural context into consideration when christening their car models. This can give the impression that these big brands don’t care enough, alienating consumers.

Of course, marketing mistakes don’t just apply to cars. In our next post, the third one in this series, we’ll look at people’s names, as well as other famous branding nightmares. Check back with us next week!

The answer is…

Both! Most of us may know tuna as a type of fish. But tuna is indeed the name of a fruit in another language – Peruvian-Spanish.

The Roman alphabet only has 26 letters but is utilized by more than a hundred languages across the globe. Inevitably, there are limited permutations and certain languages end up having words that are spelt or pronounced the same way.

We may know “abort” as the word for cancelling or stopping something, but in German, “abort” is also an archaic word for toilet. The word “burro” also has vastly different meanings in Italian and Spanish. Asking for “burro” in Italy will get you butter, but try asking for it in Spain. You’ll get a donkey instead. The word “gift” refers to a present in English but in German, it refers to “poison”.

As such coincidences exist, brands have to be extra careful with the brand names they choose when launching the brand in another market to avoid disastrous results.

Stay tuned for our next post that revolves around car names in our 3 part series.

Organizations have recognized training as a tool essential for ensuring that their employees’ skills remain relevant in this fast-paced world. Increasingly, online training courses have emerged as employers’ preferred choice for an effective training solution with a whole range of benefits.

We examine the top six reasons why organizations should start adopting online training courses into their training plans.

Amazing flexibility and convenience

With online training, employees get to determine their own learning speed. As learning speeds differ among individuals, those who take more time to learn can learn comfortably without slowing others down.

Whether employees are looking to refresh the points they have learnt or if they need more time to understand more complex points, they can go through selected sections or the entire course multiple times to maximise absorption.

Employees can work the training schedule around their own workload. If they prefer, they can even go through the course at home. This eliminates the need to coordinate timetables, especially when the numbers to be trained are very large.

Unlimited reusability

Not only can existing users go through the content as many times as they want, the courses can also be kept to train other employees in the future.

This increases your return on investment significantly!

Value for money

According to Training Magazine, corporations save between 50-70% when they opt for online training due to elimination of travel expenses.

Online training courses competently deliver the goals of training without busting your company’s training budget. When employees have to travel to external training locations, the hours spent away from work do not only mean additional costs in transportation but also decreased efficiency and possibly, lost opportunities. The lack of the need for an instructor also keeps costs low.

Consistency

Another benefit from customization is that even after localization, the messages in the localized versions remain consistent across the board. Without the human touch of an instructor, content is delivered as it is without any bias. Having an instructor may mean content getting left out or interpreted differently.

Accessibility at a click

With online training courses, all you need is a computer and internet access to embark on skills-enhancing courses.
For organizations that have employees located in different global offices, and want to implement a universal training course for all, online training courses present the ideal solution.

Even at remote places where internet access is non-existent, employees can still learn from elearning courses in the form of CD-Roms.

Ready implementation

The accessibility of online training courses is also a plus when organizations want to implement training within a short time frame. These courses have been produced with content, design, interactivity and quizzes all seamlessly integrated. Once a purchase has been made, they are good to go!

There are indeed a multitude of benefits of online training. However, if you are looking for courses that are catered specifically for your organization, in terms of its look as well as its content, taking online training courses and localizing them is your best cost-effective solution.

Verztec’s Learning and Development Solutions team is able to work on ready online training courses, adapt the course content to align it with your company’s branding and contextualize scenarios so that they remain relevant and up-to-date with your organization.

Reap the myriad benefits of online training for your organization. Select from Verztec Learning’s comprehensive library of online training courses today!