Found in Translation

Dr. Anna Elisa enjoys her first Philadelphia cheesesteak!

There’s nothing like looking at your work through the eyes of someone else. Especially someone whose language you don’t speak.

This past week our guest at The Gabriel Institute was Dr. Anna Elisa Villemor-Amaral of Kienbaum in Sao Paulo, Brazil, who is our new affiliate.  They’re consultants in executive search, assessment and all that goes with helping businesses succeed through people.  Dr. Anna Elisa is their expert in assessment.  And, compared to me, she is an expert in communicating across the Brazilian Portuguese/Philadelphia English ([please no “yo Philly!” jokes here…) chasm.  Things are always lost in translation, as she bemoaned to me last night after consuming her first Philadelphia cheesesteak with a bottle of Philly’s native beer, Yuengling.

But we have a good start.  Because of the highly technical aspects of our web-based assessment process, getting translation is not a simple matter.  It requires bridging not only language but cultural gaps.

Culture is easier to bridge, imho, especially for the well traveled non-ethnocentric.  Maybe I feel that way because my brain doesn’t seem to retain words it doesn’t have links to or immediately understand, which makes learning new languages nearly impossible.  So it was in the sharing of culture that we connected best.  Divulging our experiences as women, as mothers, as researchers coming later in life into entrepreneurship, we found the connections that are stronger than the frustrations of there often not being quite the right words to say precisely what you mean that the other person will understand fully.

I am happy to report that, as with all good but complex things, more was found than lost.