Good Reminder of Cross-Culture Communication Needs

Just read a Forbes article titled “Technology’s Language Barrier” on the topic of communicating with technology across cultures.  It is an interested article and a good reminder of how we need to increase our cross-culture communication skills as our world shrinks from technology innovation.

Simple mistakes, like not understanding that Chinese women don’t change their names when they marry, strongly impact communication.  As the Internet opens the door to more cross-culture communication, these misunderstandings can occur more frequently and with greater consequences.

The article points out that while English has become the de-facto business world language, most of the 900 million people who have Internet access don’t speak English and 250 million of those people live in Asia.  Being able to effectively communicate with these people is critical from both a cultural and a business perspective.