How to Be a Local, Anywhere

continued

Books on foreign business cultures can’t begin to prepare you for the unusual situations you encounter. I remember one that began on a snowy Boston day in 1975. I was in my office when the phone rang. It was a Brazilian entrepreneur who wanted to start a computer publication with IDG as his partner. He told me it was 90 degrees in Rio; I got on a plane and met him at the Copacabana the next morning. We worked on a business plan for three days. On the third day, which was New Year’s Eve, the entrepreneur transferred the business plan to a single sheet of paper and took me to the beach at midnight. Standing on the sand, he folded the paper into the shape of a boat and placed it at water’s edge. He explained that if the first wave at midnight carried the paper boat out to sea, the gods blessed the plan and the venture would be successful. If the wave pushed it back up on the sand, the gods disapproved. He seemed very serious so I went along with it, and fortunately so did the waves. Ten years later IDG Brazil was the largest technical publishing company in that country.

In nations with socialist economies, assumptions about business go out the window. My experience in the former Soviet Union is illustrative. In 1988, I signed a contract to launch PC World magazine with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Printing and Publishing Ministry. We determined that the first issue would have 150 pages, 30 of them full-page ads that we would sell to companies outside the Soviet Union.

I flew with a group of our largest advertising clients to Moscow for a launch party at the National Hotel. As the first issue was passed around, I heard the clients muttering, “Where’s my ad? Where’s my ad?” I flipped hurriedly through a copy and found only four ads in the whole magazine. When I asked the manager of our joint venture what had happened, he explained that the Soviet editor in chief had reviewed the ads and found half of them lacking in solid technical content. Another 11 were redundant because the company was also mentioned in an article. In the editor’s judgment, only four of the 30 ads were sufficiently useful to pass muster. It was no small matter to persuade the editor that we needed ad revenue to pay expenses, his salary included.

During the past 15 years, about two-thirds of my international travel has been in Asia. Of course, the customs in Asia take some getting used to. When I first went to Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, my business partners took me to a restaurant where the waiter decapitated a snake and poured its blood into our glasses. People in my party told me that toasting with the blood would make me a member of the “Hunan Mafia.” Fortunately I have an iron stomach (I’ve also eaten monkey brains and scorpion), so I downed the stuff. Becoming part of the inner circle paid off: Today many leaders of our Chinese business units are Hunan natives.

I know that anti-American hostility has escalated in recent years, but I haven’t experienced much. The only time that I was a bit anxious was in 1984, in Ethiopia. I was being driven around Addis Ababa when a group of men started beating on the car with clubs, crying “Die, Western devil! Die, Western devil!” Fortunately, we escaped before the windows were smashed.

My wife, who was CEO of a computer company when I met her, accompanies me on many of my trips. My children often come along as well. We typically take our vacations overseas, and if a business opportunity pops up during one of those occasions, so be it. For my wife’s 50th birthday, I took her to the South Pole, where we spent a week in an unheated tent. While we were there, I met a scientist from the National Science Foundation’s South Pole research station. He gave me a tour of the facility’s telecommunications room and let me send out e-mail reports about the use of computers for seismic research, ozone layer analysis, and glacier movement. From those reports, Computerworld Antarctica was born. It’s a website with 20,000 monthly visitors. With the site’s launch, IDG became the only publishing company doing business on all seven continents.

In 2000 my wife and I founded an institute for brain research at MIT. Researchers in neuroscience have discovered that when the brain is stimulated by new experiences it generates neurons, and the birth of those neurons improves the immune system and general health. In other words, learning promotes longevity. And one of the best forms of learning is traveling to new places. Over the years, international travel has helped IDG reach $3 billion in revenue. I believe it will also help me reach my 100th birthday.

Pat McGovern is the founder and CEO of IDG, a Massachusetts-based company with more than 13,000 employees.

Read case studies to learn more about McElroy’s DTP and localization solutions.

Doing Business with Sweden and Finland

continued

Alcohol

• Most Swedes have zero tolerance against drunkenness at work and in traffic. Drinking during lunchtime in workdays – even one beer – is taboo, and a public official sentenced for drunk driving is usually expected to resign. Most drinking takes place on weekends and during holidays.
• Swedish beer is divided into classes according to its alcohol content. There are class I (lättöl), class II (folköl) and class III (starköl) beers with a class I beer being the weakest and a class III beer being the strongest beer. Class I and II beers are available in supermarkets, whereas class III is only on sale in licensed shops (Systembolaget) or pubs, bars and restaurants. One of the biggest beer breweries in Sweden is Pripps.
• A snaps is usually brännvin (which may be vodka such as Absolut or Explorer, or akvavit), but can also be some other light-bodied spirit, as long as it isn’t sweet. Major Scandinavian brands of snaps include: Swedish “O P Andersson,” Norwegian “Linie Akvavit” and Danish “ Aalborg.”

Swedish Literature, Writers and The Nobel Prize

• Swedish people read a lot. Each year, about 65 million books are borrowed at public libraries.
• Sweden ranks third in the list of countries with the most Nobel Prize laureates in literature.
• Famous Swedish authors: Astrid Lindgren, Selma Lagerlöf, Harry Martinson, Ivar Lo-Johansson, August Strindberg, Vilhelm Moberg, Pär Lagerkvist and Astrid Lindgren.
• The Nobel Prizes: first given in 1901, are presented to the Laureates at ceremonies on December 10 each year. Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was the inventor of dynamite. The five prizes: Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Physiology, Literature and the Peace Prize. In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (The Swedish National Treasury) established a prize for economic science.

Swedish Music and Film

• Music – www.smorgasbored.com
• List of hip-hop artists: www.en.wikipedia.org

• Singing is popular in Sweden, and of its 9,000,000 inhabitants, 600,000 belong to various choirs.
• They also boast one of the most prolific death metal scenes in the world. Gothenburg is famed in the scene for the “Swedish Death” sound. Many of these bands such as In Flames, Dark Tranquility, and Stockholm’s Opeth have seen growing commercial success throughout Europe and the US.
• Famous actresses and actors include Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo, Max von Sydow, Stellan Skarsgård, Ingrid Thulin, Lena Olin and Peter Stormare.
• Ingmar Bergman, regarded as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th Century

Swedish Art, Design & Architecture

• A characteristic feature of the Swedish arts scene is the large number of art associations (about 1800). Most of them are formed by art-loving employees at companies or institutions.
• Sweden was one of the strongholds of the Functional movement. The ideas of the Functionalist movement can still be found in the profile of the IKEA company.
• Its breakthrough can be dated back to the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930, which was conceived by architect Gunnar Asplund and ‘the ideologist’ Gregor Paulsson.
• About 1,500 of Sweden’s 4,000 churches date to the Middle Ages.
• Vasa (Wasa) castles - Gripsholm Castle, Kalmar Castle and Vadstena Castle - massive walls and with a fusion of medieval elements and Renaissance architecture. Built starting with the reign of Gustav Vasa, King of Sweden from 1523; labeled the founder of modern Sweden.
• The production of tiled stoves in Sweden was resumed in 1980 at the Gustavsberg porcelain factory.
• In the province of Dalarna the old tradition of woodcarving has become a tourist industry, the most famous product of which is the gaudily painted Dalecarlian horse.
• The glassworks Kosta and Orrefors are famous for their crystal vases and glasses. They are situated in “The Glass Kingdom,” an area in the southeast of the Småland province.
• The most renowned Swedish painters from the 19th and 20th centuries are Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson and Bruno Liljefors; Carl Milles is Sweden’s internationally best known sculptor.
• Bruno Mattson, furniture designer and architect, became famous in world exhibitions in Paris in 1937 and in New York in 1939. Since 1978 the furniture factory DUX makes his classical furniture, for example the “relaxing-chair” Pernilla and the “working- chair” Eva. www.scandinaviandesign.com
• IKEA is privately held, founded in Älmhult, Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad, in 1943 who was then 17. It is owned by a Dutch-registered foundation controlled by the Kamprad family. IKEA is an acronym comprising the initials of the founder’s name, Ingvar Kamprad, and home village, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd. It has 253 stores in 35 countries; IKEA is one of the few store chains to have locations both in Israel and in other Middle East nations. The company motto is: “Affordable Solutions for Better Living.”

Misc

• Swedish weeks begin on Mondays.
• Most retail stores, at least in cities, are open all week.
• Most Swedish children are allowed to eat sweets only on Saturdays – lördagsgodis.
• The minimum vacation each year is five weeks, and most Swedes take all of July off – the “industrial vacation.”
• The Swedish people are concerned about the environment and animal protection. Swedish farmers actively advertise their products as free from genetic engineering, cruelty against animals, un-organic chemicals and excessive transportation.
• Rinkeby Swedish (Rinkebysvenska) is a common term for varieties of Swedish spoken mainly in suburbs with a high proportion of immigrants and immigrant descendants. It has a simplified version of the Swedish grammar and a richness of loanwords from the languages the speakers’ parents or grandparents originated in: mainly Turkish, with traces of Kurdish, Arabic, Greek, Persian, Serbo-Croatian, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and to some extent Latin American Spanish. There is also an influx of English words and grammar due to a fairly common identification with African Americans and the appreciation of rap and hip hop music and culture.

Other Etiquette

• In some restaurants or clubs, it is mandatory to deposit your coat. It costs 15Kn per piece.
• You do not have to tip taxi drivers.
• When visiting someone’s house in Sweden (and other Scandinavian countries) you take off your shoes when entering their house.

Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden

• Population - 490,000 in the actual city and 879,000 in the metropolitan area, making it the second largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm.
• By 2005, there were 93,965 immigrants resident in Gothenburg, which is about 20% of the population, out of which 10% are from Iran and 9% from Finland.
• Most important city for trade and industry with several well known international companies: Astra Zeneca, Ericsson Microwave Systems, Esab, SCA Moelnlycke, Nobel Biocare, Saab Ericsson Space, SKF, Stena Line, Hasselblad, and Volvo. More than 150 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are located in the Göteborg region.
• There are two universities in Gothenburg: Gothenburg University and the Chalmers University of Technology. Today there are more than 60,000 students, which makes Gothenburg the largest university city in Scandinavia.
• Gothenburg has hosted both the World Cup and European championships in football, as well as World and European championships in Athletics, World Championship in ice hockey and handball. The most famous club in the city, and in Sweden, is IFK Gothenburg. They have won the Swedish league 17 times, although the latest title came back in 1996. The Swedish season goes from April to the beginning of November. IFK Gothenburg colors are blue and white.
• List of restaurants and things to do: www.goteborg.com Or try Saluhallen, the food hall at Kungstorget. It gets rave reviews for all the types of food you can get very inexpensively. Alexandra’s is especially noted.



• The biggest attraction in the city is the amusement park Liseberg.
• The city is also noted for being the centre of the melodic death metal movement (sometimes even called “The Gothenburg sound”). Gothenburg metal is unique and distinct because of its very melodic and sometimes progressive guitar riffs and solos, and the clean singing that is incorporated (instead of just using the traditional death grunt vocals). Gothenburg’s own At the Gates, Soilwork, In Flames, and Dark Tranquility are credited with pioneering this melodic style. The Gothenburg metal has influenced numerous significant metal scenes across Europe and the rest of the world, including Finland, the United States, and Canada.
• Sister cities: Chicago, United States (since 1987), Kraków, Poland, Saint Petersburg, Russia, Tallinn, Estonia, Rostock, Germany
• In Swedish “G” is pronounced as “ye," making Göteborg sound something like “yoe-te-bor."

Göteborg History, Etc.

• Named related to ancient tribe Geats (also Goths), made famous in Beowulf. In this heroic epic poem, a hero of a Germanic tribe from southern Sweden called the Geats travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel.
• Permanent settlement founded in 1621 by King Gustavus Adolphus (Gustaf II Adolf).
• The town was planned according to Dutch concepts, with canals and fortifications.
• Gothenburg, Nebraska was founded in 1882 by Olof Bergstrom and is named for Göteborg, Sweden.
• Göteborg is situated on the western coast by Kattegatt, an arm of the North Sea, at the outlet of the river Göta älv and the Göta Canal (satellite view: en.wikipedia.org.

Finnish Food

• #1 in coffee consumption. Short article on history of coffee in Finland: http://users.tkk.fi/~untamo/file2.doc.html
• Finnish dishes tend to be less sweet than Swedish ones, and Finns use less sour cream (smetana) in preparation than their Russian neighbors.
• Breakfast usually consists of open sandwiches, often buttered (with margarine) and with toppings such as hard cheese or cold cuts. Finns usually do not have sweets on their breads; sour milk products such as Yogurt or viili are also common breakfast foods, usually served in a bowl with cereals such as corn flakes, muesli, and sometimes with sugar, fruit or jam. A third food that is commonly eaten at breakfast is porridge (puuro), often made of rolled oats, and eaten with a pat of butter (voisilmä, lit. “butter eye”) and/or with milk, or fruit or jam, especially the sort made of lingonberries.
• Karelian pasties – typically a thin rye crust with a filling of rice. Butter, often mixed with boiled egg (eggbutter or munavoi), is spread over the hot pasties before eating.
• Cabbage rolls - filling usually includes meat, often beef, lamb or pork, seasoned with onion, tomato paste, salt, black pepper, and spices; normally baked in oven and brushed with dark syrup and traditionally served with bitter lingonberry jam or fresh lingonberries.
• As in Sweden, there is a tradition of serving pea soup on Thursdays.

Alcohol

• Koskenkorva Viina (also known simply as Koskenkorva, or Kossu) is the most common clear spirit drink (38%) in Finland. The grain (barley) alcohol is produced using a 200-step continuous distillation designed to produce high-purity industrial ethanol. The drink is produced by diluting this alcohol with spring water and a very small amount of sugar. It is not a true vodka, and is never called such in Finnish. Instead, it is viina, simply “hard liquor," often used contextually similarly to the word “booze." There are several flavored variants of Koskenkorva on the market.



• Sahti is a traditional beer from Finland. Traditionally the beer is flavored with juniper berries in addition to, or instead of, hops; the mash is filtered through juniper twigs through a tun called a kuurna in Finnish. Sahti has a distinct banana flavor due to the carbohydrate contents.
• Lakka or Lakkalikööri is a liqueur produced in Finland which derives its flavor from the cloudberry fruit. The beverage is produced by soaking the berries in alcohol anywhere between two to six months until sweetened. The liqueur can be drunk as it is, but is also often mixed with hot coffee.
• In Finland, a sweet mead called Sima (cognate with zymurgy) is still an essential seasonal brew connected with the Finnish Vappu (May Day) festival. It is usually spiced by adding lemon. During secondary fermentation raisins are added; they rise to the top of the bottle when the drink is ready.

Finnish Literature, Writers

• Without a long literary history, Elias Lönnrot collected Finnish and Karelian folk poetry and arranged and published them as Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. The era saw a rise of poets and novelists who wrote in Finnish, notably Aleksis Kivi.
• Famous modernist writer - Mika Waltari; 1945 saw the publication of Waltari’s first and most successful historical novel, The Egyptian. Its theme of the corruption of humanist values in a materialist world seemed curiously topical in the aftermath of World War II, and the book became an international bestseller, serving as the basis of the 1954 Hollywood movie of the same name.
• Väinö Linna – his social realism had a profound influence in Finnish social, political and cultural life; more than 300,000 copies of Tuntematon Sotilas, a realistic war novel, have been sold in a country with a population of 4 million; the film by Edvin Laine is broadcast by the national television every Day of Independence (Dec. 6). For decades this novel has been mandatory reading in military academies.
• Ranya El Ramly wrote a much praised, award-winning debut novel Auringon asema (2002; The Position of the Sun).
• Detective stories are enjoying a particular boom of popularity.

Finnish Music, Theater

• Modern Finnish popular music has received attention also in foreign countries, especially on the rock and metal scenes, with such bands as The Rasmus, HIM, Nightwish and Stratovarius gaining international acclaim.
• The Jyväskylä Arts Festival, which is the oldest on-going summer festival in Scandinavia, concentrates on non-verbal theater.
• Jean Sibelius was one of Finland’s greatest composers. It is no wonder that Sibelius’ compositions are full of the natural vigor of the forests; once he even took a grand piano with him in the midst of forests and hills of Koli.
• The Kantele – Finland’s national instrument: http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=27002

Finnish Art, Design & Architecture

• Jyväskylä’s favorite son, the architect Alvar Aalto, is widely regarded as one of the great innovators in western architecture. The Alvar Aalto Museum and the numerous buildings designed by Aalto constantly bring to Jyväskylä professionals and amateurs in the field of architecture from all over the world.
• Artists who inspired a sense of national identity: Akseli Gallen-Kallela with his paintings, Pekka Halonen, who became renowned for his paintings depicting the forest in winter, and Eero Järnefelt, whose paintings made Koli into the epitome of the Finnish heritage landscape; I.K. Inha with his photographs, and Eliel Saarinen with his architecture and banknote illustrations.
• The reputation of Finnish design has also helped young designers with their internationalization. The rise of the University of Art and Design to become one of Europe’s leading colleges of its kind has greatly supported this trend.
• The three strong sectors of Finnish industry – forest products, metal and electronics – have rapidly expanded the role of industrial design and increased its share of the field of design.

Other Etiquette

• Tips are not expected - service is always included. If you feel you have received excellent service or someone really has gone out of their way to help you in a taxi or in a restaurant, feel free to tip - the recipient is normally pleased. But if your tip is declined, don’t push it...

Miscellaneous

• Became EU member in 1995, uses the Euro, neither Sweden or Finland are members of NATO.
• Finland’s foreign community, only 2% of the population, is very small in comparison with other European countries but it is growing. They are mostly from the former Soviet Union.
• Families with children are especially well taken care of by society, and their lives are made easier by the many types of support and benefits available.
• The world’s most renowned travel publisher, Lonely Planet, has listed Finland as one of the 10 countries to visit in 2007: www.visitfinland.com
• Finnish summer 2007 brochure: www.visitfinland.com
• Santa Claus Village is situated 8 km north of Rovaniemi. Santa Claus’ Office is right near the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland.
• For most of its history, Finland was ruled by another country. For about 500 years, Finland’s neighbor to the west, Sweden, ruled it. And for another hundred years, Finland’s neighbor to the west, Russia, ruled it.

Jyväskylä, Finland

• Located in the lake district of Central Finland, it is celebrating its 170th birthday on the 22nd of March 2007 - for one whole week.
• 80,000 inhabitants. The Jyväskylä region - comprising of the city of Jyväskylä and 9 municipalities - has over 160,000 inhabitants.
• It is a school and university town with 39 000 students.
• The landscape of Jyväskylä is varied with lakes, forests and hills within walking distance of the city center.
• An important incubator for new business and companies is the Jyväskylä Science Park, combining newest research and development to the needs of business life. The Human Technologies Centre Agora focuses on developing human-centered information technology and creates new kind of interaction between high-level research, education, enterprises, and the local community.

References used

Business in Sweden: www.buyusa.gov

Swedish Etiquette: www.ediplomat.com

Business in Finland: www.buyusa.gov

Finnish Etiquette: www.virtual.finland.com

More info: www.kwintessential.com.uk

Finnish sauna etiquette: www.disabled-world.com

Useful info: www.centralfinland.com

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The New ASTM Translation Guide (continued)

Kim Vitray

According to Beatriz, a standard—this standard—can help us “talk to [our] clients, find a common vocabulary with which to communicate, find ways to improve [our] practice, or even come up with new ideas to try or areas in which to expand [our] knowledge and expertise.”³ Jiri Stejskal, president of language services company CETRA and current president of the ATA, states that the ASTM standard “lists translation-specific parameters that, when given project-specific values, provide a set of specifications against which the quality of a translation can be evaluated.”⁴

The ASTM standard guide “identifies factors relevant to the quality of language translation services for each phase of a translation project.”⁵ While it is not the most exciting reading material any of us will ever have on our bedside tables, it is chock-full of valuable definitions and information for anyone involved in translation, on both the client and vendor sides. I certainly wish I had had such a document when I began in the industry eight years ago!

In discussing its significance, the guide points out that “The requester, who can be an individual or hold nearly any position within an organization, may not know the target language or even the source language and thus may not be able to evaluate the translation personally…. Thus it is important to have a standard guide for relationships between the requester and the translation service provider so that certain questions are answered before starting a translation project—questions for which answers are critical to the successful delivery of a quality translation through the translation supply chain to the end user.”⁶ Yes, indeed!

Like most standards, this one begins with a terminology section that defines and discusses vocabulary commonly used in the translation industry. If you ever wondered about, or need to agree on, the difference between translation, localization, internationalization, and globalization, for example, this guide can help you. Other items that benefit from clear definition are the roles of editor versus proofreader versus reviewer, and terms such as back translation, locale, and translation memory.

Quality in translation is often debated, and at McElroy, we’ve always considered quality to be a translation’s “fitness for use.” In other words, we strive to determine and supply exactly what our client needs, whether that is summarization of the text, a literal rendering of a patent, or a desktop-published brochure with localized graphics. The ASTM guide supports our approach, defining quality as “the degree to which the characteristics of a translation fulfill the requirements of the agreed-upon specifications.”⁷

Another particularly useful feature of the guide is its itemization of the steps required to produce a high-quality result. These steps include selecting a translation service provider, defining project specifications, production (terminology management, translation, editing, formatting, proofreading, and quality control), and post-project review. Each step is defined and discussed in clear, concise, understandable language.

It’s interesting that the guide challenges two commonly held beliefs in the translation industry. The first is the validity of the back translation as an effective quality control step. According to the ASTM guide, “A back translation will not result in a text that is identical to the source text, and furthermore, a back translation is not necessarily a good indicator of the quality of the translation.”⁸ We at McElroy certainly agree, although we recognize the role that back translations play in our clients’ needs to meet regulatory requirements. The guide further stipulates that “…it should be decided in advance whether a back translation is requested.”⁹

The second challenged belief is the recommendation that translators translate into their native language. The guide points out that people who have studied, mastered, and immersed themselves in another language can be very good translators despite being nonnative speakers. The point is to instead qualify a translation service provider’s competencies, and not simply make a decision based on where the translator may have been born and raised.

A final significant contribution of the guide is to define the roles of the requester and the translation service provider: “Effective communication between the requester and the project manager is imperative to the success of a project. The more complex the project and the more people involved, the more critical communication becomes.” (Seems obvious, doesn’t it?!) “The project manager is responsible for ensuring that the specifications are met. The requester, in turn, is also responsible for providing assistance in a prompt and reliable manner to the project manager as required, so that specifications can be met.”¹⁰

I strongly encourage all of our clients to obtain the ASTM’s “Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation.” It’s a ground-breaking document in the translation industry that sets out great definitions and explanations for terms and issues that arise in conversations we have with our clients and translators every day. The guide can be downloaded in PDF format from www.astm.org for $41. Just type “translation” in the website search box and it will pop right up.

And as valuable as it is, it will certainly also mitigate your need for Ambien!

¹www.astm.org.

^2-3The ATA Chronicle, July 2006, “So…Is There a Good Thing About Standards?”

⁴The ATA Chronicle, October 2006, “Quality Assessment in Translation.”

^5-10 ASTM International, F 2575-06 “Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation,” June 2006.

© McElroy Translation 2007

Answers to Cultural Trivia Questions:
1. B, 2. D, 3. C, 4. B, 5. B, 6. A, 7. A, 8. D, 9. C, 10. C

Copyright 1999-2007, McElroy Translation, All rights reserved

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