Travails of a linguistically challenged in Taiwan

Language is the dress of thought - so said Samuel Johnson and in this respect, I was naked today.

Well, when one applies normal yardsticks, I am certainly not linguistically challenged. I can speak 4 languages and understand a fifth - as is the case with many Indians. But when it comes to being in Taiwan, circumstances are no more normal and the trio of English, Hindi and Tamil that I relied on for the past 25 years of my life failed me during these last two weeks. When I left for Taiwan, lots of well-wishers warned me that the only problem, and not a small one, in Taiwan would be to find vegetarian food. But I think on that count, I needn't have feared at all. I might have been better equipped, if instead of the few ready-to-cook packets of veg fare, I had carried a English to Mandarin dictionary or guidebook. Very few people in this part of the world understand English, much less speak the language, but for a couple of service staff in the hotel where I am put up, a few sales-coordinators in the partner-company here and a three-member team from my company stationed here.

This is my second short trip in a period of six months. During my first visit, one day the drain in my bathroom got clogged and I dialed the concierge to seek the help of the housekeeping staff. When I tried to explain to her my predicament, she failed to understand. "Clogged" and "flush" wouldnt work, so I tried telling her that the "water in my bathroom doesnt go". She gave an exclamation of immediate understanding and I sighed - finally I got through. But to my dismay, she asked me a return question - Hot Water or Cold water? It took me a few seconds to realise that she thought there was no water coming through the tap/shower. I then vehemently and repeatedly said "No !", that was not it. I spent another couple of minutes and then I finally mouthed just two words "Housekeeping - send ". Ten minutes later, I had a helpful lady at my door and I showed her, without attempting to explain, my problem. She immediately went ahead and solved it !

In Taiwan, you simply cannot go out onto the streets and hope to get directions from a passerby. No one you meet on the streets would understand English. And if you thought you could just mouth the name of the place or shop you seek and be understood, you will be in for a surprise. In Chinese, the proper nouns also different - the name itself differs and hence the pronunciation too. For instance, my hotel name is Ambassador but in Chinese its "Kopeen". Similarly, the company I visit daily is also called differently in Chinese. So, the best thing to do here, I learnt later, is to take a card which has the name written in chinese characters and show it to the taxi driver, the bus-driver (if you are brave enough to try one) or the passerby on the street (you can atleast make out the direction towards which his hand points ! ).

In fact, one of the reason why I am here is because of this communication barrier. The task for which I am here could possibly have been directed remotely from my office in Bangalore. But apart from the slow pace of progress which it will entail, the bigger problem is information lost in translation. I am here in relation to some work with a sub-contract mfg company in Taiwan. When I work with them from Bangalore, I usually communicate through a local Cypress intermediary at their office in Taiwan in English. He then communicates it in simpler instructions and elementary English to an engineer from this firm (who understands a bit of English) and he in turn translates it into Chinese to the engineer who will actually work on the task. I find that often critical information is lost, mis-interpreted in this chain of translation resulting in lot of mistakes and re-work. This is not acceptable and hence the reason why I am here.

But the beauty is I find that quite a few employees at this Taiwanese firm are able to understand and write decent English in their emails. But when you speak the same sentence, they cant understand. Something akin to how many Tamilians used to learn Hindi through postal govt courses and certifications ("Rashtrabhasha" etc) in the past but couldnt speak well because of lack of exposure to the spoken form. So I always walk around with a paper and pen in the office here in Taiwan.

But since Taiwan does a lot of business with the US, English language skill is accorded a premium here and people pay big bucks to learn the Queen's language ...eh...the yankee's language perhaps.