Romanization of character language systems, such as Chinese, can pose cultural and linguistic challenges for communicators. Photo credit: Our Signature by 2493™ on Flickr

Have you noticed in the coverage about the protests in Libya that the name of the country’s leader is spelled differently depending on the news organization? I’ve seen his name reported as Muammar el-Qaddafi, [...]]]>

Romanization of character language systems, such as Chinese, can pose cultural and linguistic challenges for communicators. Photo credit: Our Signature by 2493™ on Flickr

Have you noticed in the coverage about the protests in Libya that the name of the country’s leader is spelled differently depending on the news organization? I’ve seen his name reported as Muammar el-Qaddafi, Moammar Gadhafi, Muammar Qaddafi or Muammar Gaddafi. Are some reporters spelling his name incorrectly? If so, which is the correct spelling?

Slate recently posted an article exploring this issue. The answer? All of them are correct. According to Slate, each version is an acknowledged transliteration — changing letters or words from one alphabet into the corresponding letters or words from another alphabet — or Romanization — converting a language from another alphabet or a pictographic system into the Latin alphabet — of his Arabic name. However, the article did not answer an important question — which version is the most culturally and linguistically appropriate?

When communicating with audiences who speak a language other than English, it is critically important that translation extend beyond the alphabet. Culturally and linguistically competent communications takes into account both native language and culture, and is a key component to ensuring that a message is understood.

Languages based on alphabets or pictographic language systems, such as Arabic, Asian, Mediterranean and Eastern European, can present unique challenges when we attempt translation. Because these languages are written using characters that are vastly different from the Latin-based alphabet, adaptation may require the use of transliteration or Romanization for translating names and cultural terms. However, its important to test your adaptation and your messages with your audience to be sure that the transliteration does not affect the meaning. For example, how a name or word is spelled impacts how it is pronounced; pronunciations alone can confuse terms, such as Slate’s example regarding the spelling of Muslim.

Finally, Kathy Park wants to know why “Moslem” is considered an offensive spelling. The problem with spelling the Arabic word meaning “one who surrenders to God” as “Moslem” and not “Muslim” is that people end up pronouncing it mawslem, which is a different word that means “oppressor.”

When in doubt of how best to spell a name or word from a non-Latin alphabet language, create an informal focus group of your target multicultural audience for guidance. While you may receive differing opinions, you should be able to gather at least an informed recommendation to guide your spelling and provide the backup you need, if your language selection is questioned.

Photo Credit: MCS@flickr

How many times have those of us with children been asked, “Tell me the story about the day I was born” (or if they were adopted, “Tell me the story about the day you brought me home.”)? Children never get tired of hearing stories about themselves, because those stories help them [...]]]>

Photo Credit: MCS@flickr

How many times have those of us with children been asked, “Tell me the story about the day I was born” (or if they were adopted, “Tell me the story about the day you brought me home.”)? Children never get tired of hearing stories about themselves, because those stories help them define who they are. As a nation, we listen every year to the story the President tells us about our country in the State of the Union because it defines who we are, and who we hope to be.

The great speeches of our time are those that tell a story that unites us and that captures an emotion we all are feeling. Think about Ronald Reagan (or actually, the great speechwriter, Peggy Noonan) who captured the nation’s grief after the Challenger tragedy:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Each year, I like to watch the State of the Union to see the story the President will tell. As communicators, we work to craft stories in a way that will compel and convince, and each year, it is fascinating to see how every President tells the story of the United States. We know that, whether we’re giving a speech or relaunching a brand, we need to know our audience, to control our own message, and to be prepared to defend our brand in a crisis. To accomplish all this, President Obama’s State of the Union speech needed to capture the somber mood of a nation still remembering the Tucson shooting, reframe the mid-term election which handed his party solid defeats, and convince the nation that “the state of the union is strong.” He also wanted to move the country away from “business as usual” in the ways it governed and invested. From a communicator’s perspective, how did President Obama do?

Know Your Audience
The Congressional cliques were broken up when Democrats and Republicans comingled in the audience, instead of sitting along party lines, for the State of the Union. But Congress still looked to their party leaders — embodied by Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker John Boehner sitting behind the President — for how to react to the speech. President Obama began by praising and welcoming Boehner and by mentioning the empty chair where Representative Gabrielle Giffords should be sitting. We often counsel clients giving speeches to include “shout-outs” to people so that the audience is immediately engaged. While President Obama went on to do the traditional shout-outs to people who were brought in because their stories proved a point, these first two acknowledgments were clever because every member of Congress was likely to applaud either Boehner or Giffords, if not both.

Control Your Story
You might never have known that the Democrats suffered bitter defeat at the hands of Republicans in the last election if you listened to President Obama’s speech. In his speech, the American people had voted to ensure that government ruled with strong voices from both parties, and the divisiveness was really just the “contentious and frustrating and messy” process of democracy. Obama went a step further, making the party differences seem trivial compared to the big picture:

We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution. We may have different opinions, but we believe in the same promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a country where anything’s possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you come from.

Defend Your Brand
Anyone who has fundamental policy differences with the President represents a dissenting story from the one the President wanted to tell during the State of the Union. Obama preempted much of the dissent by painting disagreement as a welcome part of the democratic process and by making the villain of the story — because every good story must have a villain — not the Republicans, but the other countries who are poised to take advantage of any competitive weakness we show:

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.

Some criticized the President for a lackluster delivery, especially after the rousing speech he gave in Tucson.

But, from a communicator’s perspective, I think he did what he needed to do, which was to turn down the heated rhetoric. He acknowledged that he knew his audience, he reframed his “story” and he preempted some — although certainly not all — criticism from Conservatives. And how did he communicate about innovation? Interestingly, if you look only at the words that Obama used, you will see the hot-button issues he emphasized, despite the tone. “Americans,” “jobs” and “work” — all key issues. But also one other word, which has not played a large role since Johnson and Kennedy State of the Unions: “new.”

Read more.

In this day of texting and emoticons, we communicators often mourn the demise of our beloved language. How can the beauty and importance of tiny little parts of speech like prepositions survive in a world too busy to bother with whole sentences?

Stop by madame.furie, on Flickr

Well, the importance of a preposition just got [...]]]>

In this day of texting and emoticons, we communicators often mourn the demise of our beloved language. How can the beauty and importance of tiny little parts of speech like prepositions survive in a world too busy to bother with whole sentences?

Stop by madame.furie, on Flickr

Well, the importance of a preposition just got a new life in Virginia. In fact, you might even say a preposition can save lives.

Most of us stop our cars, however grudgingly, when a school bus turns on its red lights and pulls out its stop signs. But one Virginia man who whipped on past a school bus loading children was found “not guilty” by a Fairfax County Circuit judge.

Why?

Two little letters. The law says: “A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or discharging children.”

Did you catch it? Stop…any school bus. Not stop AT any school bus. The school bus was already stopped, so the man didn’t need to stop the school bus. He needed to stop AT or maybe even FOR the bus.

Virginia lawmakers say they won’t be able to edit the legislation until January, and most new laws won’t take effect until July.

Not such good news for students getting on to school buses. But a major victory for the importance of language.

Earlier this year, Maria Enie discussed the impact of texting on the English language in this blog post. While I understand that texting and micro-blogging is part of an evolution of the English language, I am concerned that the informal texting language is becoming the English language for Millennials. This Ragan.com article discusses the [...]]]>

Earlier this year, Maria Enie discussed the impact of texting on the English language in this blog post. While I understand that texting and micro-blogging is part of an evolution of the English language, I am concerned that the informal texting language is becoming the English language for Millennials. This Ragan.com article discusses the negative impact that texting and tweeting can have on the English language, or as this article calls it “an erosion of the English language.”

A 2008 study by the Pew Research Center on “Writing, Technology and Teens” found that “nearly two-thirds of all teens use some informal styles from their text-based communications in their school assignments, a fact that should trouble most educators.” Do you talk to your friends the same way that you speak to your professors or your boss? You do if you bring your texting and tweeting language into papers, assignments and…gasp…cover letters or other business communication.

As a Millennial myself, I find it disheartening that my peers are bringing their texting and tweeting language into the classroom and workplace. Sure, none of us can remember a time without Internet and cell phones, but does that mean that we can no longer separate informal conversations from formal ones? According to the Ragan article:

There are growing signs that excessive use of direct messaging, especially Twitter, leads to an erosion of the English language. College professors are seeing LOL-speak, fractured grammar, informal acronyms and emoticons crop into college essays. Teachers are noticing more punctuation errors (especially apostrophe errors), spelling mistakes, and inconsistent capitalization usually found only in text messages and Twitter posts. More students are failing English exams due to a lack of basic grammar skills.

I find this disturbing because while the concise, micro-blogging style of writing may help the English language evolve, texting language becomes a problem if people are unable to differentiate tweeting from college essays or business communication. This is not just a problem for the public relations and communication world–all industries need employees that can write well.

My advice to college students and recent graduates is to always think about your audience. As PR professionals know, we have different messages and mediums for different audiences. When you are talking with friends it is okay to use the abbreviated texting and tweeting language. However, when communicating with a professor or business colleague, either in person or in writing, it is important to take on a more formal and traditional style of speaking and writing.

This is especially important when you are first entering the professional world, as many Millennials are, because you want your colleagues to take you seriously and you will spend (at least) the first few years of your career proving that you are capable of handling the tasks that are expected of you. However, you should also think about how you can use your knowledge of the micro-blogging language to your advantage when you enter the professional world. For example, you could demonstrate your concise (and grammatically correct!) writing skills honed on Twitter.

From coverage of Cornell University’s response to six students’ deaths by suicide to reports of entertainer Marie Osmond’s teenage son’s death by suicide, recently reporters are writing and talking a lot about suicide.

While it’s great that news coverage is driving public dialogue about this often taboo topic, the news coverage does not utilize linguistically [...]]]>

From coverage of Cornell University’s response to six students’ deaths by suicide to reports of entertainer Marie Osmond’s teenage son’s death by suicide, recently reporters are writing and talking a lot about suicide.

While it’s great that news coverage is driving public dialogue about this often taboo topic, the news coverage does not utilize linguistically competent language regarding suicide.  As a result, it could hinder groups trying to support and help those impacted by these deaths.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skender/ / CC BY 2.0

In response to this suicide news story trend, Alicia Sparks – on her Celebrity Psychings blog – discussed how media can responsibly report on suicide. For example, instead of saying someone “committed suicide,” mental health consumers and leaders prefer to say someone “died by suicide” instead. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Association of Suicidology and Annenberg Public Policy Center provide tips to reporters on how to report on suicide without inadvertently encouraging  copycat actions.  Their research shows that the way suicide deaths are reported can impact whether suicide contagions occur or not. Word and phrase selection can be very influential. Overly dramatic headlines like “Do Cornell’s Gorges Make Kids Commit Suicide?” or “Does 6 deaths in 6 months make Cornell ‘suicide school’?” could hinder Cornell’s suicide prevention efforts.

Suicide is not the only mental health challenge or health-related issue to fall victim to the media’s inflammatory or linguistically incompetent phrasing. It’s not uncommon for reporters to say that someone is “schizophrenic” instead of “has schizophrenia.” Similar to how we speak about cancer, the medical illness, disorder or condition should not be an adjective describing people, but should be phrased as “has cancer,” instead of “is cancerous.”

While the media has been reporting about AIDS/HIV for more than 25 years, they still refer to people living with AIDS/HIV as “is HIV-positive” or “has AIDS,” not acknowledging how medical advances allow people to “live” with the disease as opposed to it being a death sentence.

As health communicators, we must make sure that our media materials use linguistic and culturally competent words and phrases to help the media start stories on the right foot. Competency in our communication can’t be limited to just being “politically correct.”  Instead, we must acknowledge the power (and influence) word selection has in impacting behavior change and engaging (and persuading) key audiences.

Last year, I drafted a media advisory referencing suicide and witnessed the power of words. Familiar with how suicide is discussed within the mental health community, I chose to use “died by suicide” in the media advisory. When the advisory was reviewed by one of the people highlighted in it, I received this email in response:

Bravo! Appreciate the use of “died by suicide” rather than committed suicide as a person who is surviving a sister’s death by suicide in 1995 and as a suicide attempt survivor. It’s language that brings dignity to families, friends and those of us who have struggled to survive and recover.

British politician Pearl Strachan Hurd once said, “Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs.”  We want our words as communicators — and those of the media — to not only inform and persuade, but also offer dignity and respect to sensitive, intimate stories and lives we report in our materials and news outlets.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaldemocracy/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Understanding how best to communicate with and support refugee communities living in the United States can be a daunting challenge. In 2008, more than 60,000 refugees immigrated to the United States from all around the world. For refugee families, their arrival in America is not the end of their [...]]]>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaldemocracy/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Understanding how best to communicate with and support refugee communities living in the United States can be a daunting challenge. In 2008, more than 60,000 refugees immigrated to the United States from all around the world. For refugee families, their arrival in America is not the end of their journey, but a beginning filled with new opportunities and many transition challenges.

Recently, I discovered a new research resource that can help communicators become more culturally and linguistically competent when reaching out to and supporting refugee communities.  The Cultural Orientation Resource Center (COR Center) develops informational materials for refugees, service providers, and anyone interested in learning more about refugee communities in the United States.

Compiled by resettlement service providers working within these communities, the COR Center “backgrounders” provide  historical and cultural characteristics about refugee groups which can help communicators  determine what strategies, tactics, and messages would be best to reach their target audience. For an example, read the recent backgrounder on Iraqi refugees living in the United States that were displaced by the Iraq war and its aftermath.

What’s more, the Center has highlighted their available resources on Haiti, including a background on Haitian history and culture, as well as an English-Haitian Creole phrasebook.  They are designed “primarily for service providers and others assisting refugees in their new communities in the United States,” and both can be viewed online or downloaded for free.

Research is the foundation of effective communication.  Thanks to this free database, we can help refugees seeking asylum in America adjust to their new country by using these documents to deepen our understanding of their past and present, but also learn to speak the same language.

Photo Credit: U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office

The Washington Post reports that 20 percent of people may not participate in the 2010 census, even though they are legally obligated to do so. According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, many respondents said they are too busy or uninterested to fill [...]]]>

Photo Credit: U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office

The Washington Post reports that 20 percent of people may not participate in the 2010 census, even though they are legally obligated to do so. According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, many respondents said they are too busy or uninterested to fill out the 10 question form, while many others simply distrust the government or worry about privacy.

In response to concerns from national civil rights groups, the Census Bureau has been touting a $133 million advertising campaign, which includes television spots in 28 different languages. The Bureau estimates it will reach the average person 42 times with slogans such as the “2010 census – it’s in our hands.”

Key to the Bureau’s success will not only be its ability to offer ads in-language, but also to provide messages that respond to cultural concerns and barriers to filling out the form. The Census Bureau reports that the emphasis in the message varies with the audience, with objects, backgrounds, and other props changing in some TV ads to reach different groups.

The question is, will that be enough? With the Census launching in March, two months of positive, culturally considerate messaging might not be adequate to mitigate years, even decades, of misinformation and distrust.

Census officials say that each percentage point of nonresponse to the initial survey costs $80-90 million to hire people to knock on doors. In preparing for the 2020 census, it might be wise to consider investing that money over the next decade in long-term, culturally competent messaging that increases dialogue and understanding about the need for and benefits of this critical decennial count.