On Brazen Careerist, I’ve read a series of fascinating posts on how cultural stereotypes can be assets, by Valentina Thörner da Cruz, a German woman living in Barcelona. In this post she explains how her typically German emphasis on structure helps her at work. I think this is excellent advice for anyone writing for business, especially in a foreign language.
(1.) Worry about the content, not the language. Writing a well structured and easily understandable paper is not the same as “writing beautiful”. If I were to worry too much about the beauty of my language I would never get everything done. And here is the thing: I am not a copywriter. I do not write for marketing purposes. I write to explain things. To make complicated relations clear to people from outside (the company, the project, the team). If these things are to be published they need to go through the hands of a native-speaking copywriter anyway (as I usually write in foreign languages). So get rid of the idea to write everything in perfect style. The understandibility is the important thing (and yes, you may create new words if necessary).
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(5) The first proofreader should be somebody who doesn’t know the project. This will give you relevant feedback on whether your style is easy enough for new people to understand it. Don’t underestimate the impact of your own implicit knowledge which you cannot expect everybody to have. [more]
In my experience, China’s educational system also values structure, but it’s more top-down-listen-to-the-teacher structure than let-me-figure-out-how-best-to-express-my-ideas structure. I look forward to sharing this advice with my students.
I can definitely identify with her idea of cultural stereotypes as assets. I’m American. Some of the positive stereotypes ascribed to my nationality: friendly to strangers, wealthy, sporty, etc. I think my friendliness has been an asset in the workplace, both at home and here in China. There are also plenty of negative ones: oblivious to the rest of the world, bad at learning foreign languages, etc. I find myself consciously challenging these stereotypes by reading a lot and speaking Chinese and Spanish as much as possible (though ideally not in the same conversation.)
What stereotypes are ascribed to you, based on your nationality, and how have they affected your professional communications?
-Leslie
First of all, thank you China Law Blog!
Dan Harris reacted here to my post about creativity in Chinese legal work. He pointed to an article he’d written about working with Chinese and Korean lawyers, and suggested that lawyers’ creativity could be correlated with the distinction between common law and civil law countries. It’s great to see this newborn blog inspiring comments from the China-focused blogging community.
Update: More Thoughts on Chinese Lawyers and Creativity
Today I spoke with a different attorney from the same firm, and asked, “Do you think you are creative?” His response? “Definitely.” He often deals with lawsuits, and he needs to analyze information from many sources and assemble it in a way that will help meet his clients’ goals. He’s also constantly dealing with people from other countries and needs to be creative to communicate in a way that resonates with them. And he mentioned the need to be creative in motivating his staff.
I mention this because I want to avoid presenting a single story of Chinese lawyers and creativity.
My personal blog is called “Beyond China’s Single Story.” The title comes from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant TED Talk about the importance of recognizing many stories about a given place.
I first learned of this TED Talk and how it relates to China from this excellent post from All Roads Lead to China.
-Leslie
I just had a fascinating conversation with one of my students, an attorney at a leading intellectual property law firm. We read “Fright Bulb: How to Crush Your Last Shard of Creativity,” the editor’s letter from the December 2009 issue of Psychology Today. [The article doesn't appear to be online. I teach him and his colleagues advanced, industry-specific, one-on-one English lessons.]
This note from editor Kaja Perina (yes, that’s her picture, from Psychology Today) begins:
For some people, there is no greater buzzkill than the chirpy imperative, “Be creative!” These words are especially irksome when accompanied by the clicking of a stopwatch or the knowledge that the speaker himself cannot solve the problem in question. The idea of creativity on demand can intimidate — or at least irritate — an otherwise innovative brain.
My student found this paragraph tricky for several reasons. He first noticed the unfamiliar colloquiallisms in the first few lines: “buzzkill,” “chirpy,” “irksome.” Once we tackled this vocabulary, the underlying sentiment surprised him more.
He kept saying, “I’m not creative.” In his work, it is rare for anyone to make “Be creative” a chirpy imperative. Legal work depends on both established procedures and clients’ expectations, and it would be quite odd for a manager to insist on explicitly creative output.
Also, he mentioned that a Chinese manager would lose face if he admitted that he “himself cannot solve the problem in question.” In the rare circumstance that he would communicate such a thing, he would do so in a roundabout way that would both maintain his dignity and imply the desire for assistance.
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