Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Mandarin, Muthaf87ker - Do You Speak It?

In the mother of all ironies, the one boy in his class who could barely speak Mandarin let alone read or write it, ended up getting sent to China.

I’m talking about myself by the way.

While my Mandarin language skills have improved by leap and bounds in the past 2 years I have been sojourning in China, real problems lurk under the surface.

I’ve managed to get by, simply because management in China shrug their shoulders and point out that the fact that I’m a regional manager so the only language I’m expected to conversant in is English and Politicalese. To a certain extent, that is true. Simply by virtue of combining incredible English and grade-level Mandarin during meetings, I find myself able to open up doors and move mountains.

The problem comes when I have to manage my own team. How do you manage details, when you can’t communicate the actual details in Mandarin to your team? And by details, I mean day-by-day operational f87kshit issues that come faster than you can solve them. And how on earth can you make decision or be aware of which issues require priority when you can’t really fully understand the machine gun Mandarin coming out of your team’s mouths?

My team gets frustrated because they can’t get me to understand. I get frustrated and frightened because I can’t understand. Everybody loses.

Any expats out there with similar issues?

me speaka no japanese desu too.

you are not alone desu.

I’m a Malaysian chinese and although i’m pretty much chinese educated, i’m still having some issues speaking with my China-chinese counterparts in their localized mandarin, so you’re not alone… what the heck, I didn’t learn IT in malay, let alone Mandarin?? that’s the challenges i face every now and then…

THEN….. seriously consider updating your CV and looking for a new job…. There are so many options out there for you including the one that you and I had last talked about which is even more urgent for you to consider selfishly for better compensation and to save your health and to be happier and more productive with your job. SERIOUSLY!

Most problems are with the engineering terms in Chinese.
That’s our own problem really so mix around more with the local management or Taiwanese businessman/salesman.

Another problem is English politicalese that has to be translated into its proper Mandarin term with sufficient hints of urgency (or threat of bodily harm). This is an art, you’ll need a mentor (preferably from the cut-throat tooling/molding industry)

Another AM I knew spent some time conducting English-Chinese-Communication classes regualrly after work. If nothing else at least open up the weekly email inbox and explain each email what they really mean in slow-clear-standard mandarin.

This’ll take some time but it works and soon you’ll see them cut-n-paste email-english into their speech and at some point of time both party will reach an equilibirium.

Until they quit and a new guy comes in of course…

Usually for reporting, I request for a show-and-tell,not just tell. Bring me the problem in its physical form (or if it’s a catfight with other dept/vendor/customer, show me the email or photo) and tell me the whole story and draw things on the whiteboard at the same time.

Beats asking them to repeat.

I had problem communicating with them even if I know mandarin….duh. i just need to brush up on those those technical terms

if this makes you feel betta….. i lose my tongue these days when i need to converse in basic chinese. i depend on my friends to converse for me instead! GAH!

I walked away from the Japanese sales ppl cause they fail to get their points across in English. Not only that but mentality probs are just as bad, if not worse (unability to say what they *really* want/mean)

i dun understand inglishi, specificallly uk inglishi

so….wat were they doing in the Olympic closing ceremony ? >.<”

to ur problem, hire sum sg/msia graduate in china la