As well as comprising 40% of the world population, the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China) currently have a collective GDP of $18 trillion. Experts predict that in the future, these economies will grow strongly (especially in the fields of manufacturing, energy, resources, currency relationships and trade flows) and enter the top rank of global economies. With this in mind, UKTI recently organised a conference in Leeds featuring specialist speakers to give companies an overview of how to best exploit these markets. So what are the opportunities and challenges that each region poses for UK companies? Below is a brief overview of the main aspects of the different BRIC economies. To watch the short video of the event, including excerpts of the key speakers, please see video below

BRAZIL:

Overview

• Used to be seen as the weak link in the BRICs – no longer
• Held up well in the downturn compared with previous crises
• Benefiting from Asian demand for its food and mineral exports
• Further boost from large new deep-sea oil fields to come on stream.

Risks

• Currency appreciation hits manufacturing
• Recent success breeds policy hubris

Strengths

• Market Opportunities – huge, diversified economy
• Political stability
• Low legal risks – keen to encourage foreign investment

Weaknesses

• Infrastructure – increasingly inadequate, investment limited by budget constraints
• Financing – equity market underdeveloped, long-term financing hard to obtain
• Taxation – complex and costly system

RUSSIA

Overview

• A worthy BRIC? Only by weight, not growth performance
• Hard-hit by global downturn, but now recovering robustly
• Structural constraints mean growth will not return to pre-2008 rates.
• Modernisation agenda requires FDI

Problems

• Over-reliant on oil and gas
• Dire demographics

Strengths

• Market Opportunities – large, relatively wealthy middle-class
• Labour force – good skill levels, despite some deterioration

Weaknesses

• Corruption and poor rule of law
• Low government effectiveness – weak institutions
• Lack of competition – concentration of economic power in massive conglomerates

INDIA AND CHINA

Overview

• India and China will be the two fastest growing major emerging markets over the next decade
• The continental sized nature of both economies means that they have decoupled from developed markets to some extent
• China has become an outsourcing story in manufacturing and an increasingly important global source of demand for a range of products
• India has become an outsourcing story in services and is playing catch up with China as a major global economic player

The opportunities are similar:

• High income and population growth, along with rapid urbanisation, are creating sales opportunities for consumer groups
• Economic liberalisation is further opening up potential new revenue sources for both domestic and foreign companies
• Infrastructure remains inadequate and, along with industrial development, will continue to provide a market for commercial groups
• The continental sized nature of both economies means they are offering a diversified market
• A relatively abundant labour force and improving supply chains are making it easier to outsource operations from both countries.

The risks differ:

India

• Coalition politics will prevent rapid progress on economic reforms
• Poor public finances will prevent much-needed public infrastructure investment
• The legal system often works better in theory than in practice

China

• The government’s desire to maintain control means big bang reforms are unlikely
• Reversals in economic policy remain possible
• The legal system remains opaque and favours state or local enterprises

A long term risk factor in both relates to demographics and income disparities, which have socio-economic and political implications.

For further information on the BRIC economies, please do not hesitate to contact Adele Baig at UKTI (Adele@uktiyh.org.uk) who will pass your details on to the relevant country specialist.

Source: Aidan Manktelow, Kilbinder Dosanjh (Economist Intelligence Unit). For more information, visit www.ukti.gov.uk

Alexia Sloane, a gifted linguist, fluent in English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin was given an opportunity to work as an interpreter at the European Parliament in Brussels this month.

‘The other interpreters were amazed at how well she did as the debate was quite complicated and many of the words were rather technical.’

What makes Alexia unique amongst interpreters is that she is only 10 years old, and is blind.

‘She was given a dispensation to get into the building, where there is usually a minimum age requirement of 14, and sat in a booth listening and interpreting,’ said Alexia’s mother.

Having an English father, and a half Spanish, half French mother, Alexia was trilingual from birth. At the age of two she lost her eyesight as a result of a brain tumour.

However, Alexia adapted quickly and was able to read and write Braille by the age of four. At the age of six she added Mandarin to her repertoire and decided she wanted to be an interpreter. Last year Alexia took her French and Spanish GCSEs (6 years ahead of her school year) and received an A*in each.

After winning the young achiever of the year award she asked to shadow the European Parliament’s head interpreter as her prize.

‘It was fantastic and I’m absolutely determined now to become an interpreter,’ said Alexia.

Source: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/860967-blind-ten-year-old-becomes-european-parliaments-youngest-interpreter#ixzz1JsofJCK0

Our thoughts are with the Japanese people this week as the whole world comes to terms with images of one of the most horrific natural disasters ever. As an international business with translators spread across the globe, events such as the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan last week resonate deeply with us and whilst we hope all of our associates in Japan are safe, we can only imagine the sense of shock and despair they must feel.

Even the catalogue of events striking other nations such as Thailand’s tsunami, Haiti ‘s earthquake and most recently the earthquake in New Zealand, each of them awful, still do not prepare for the shock of yet another disaster of even greater severity.

A skilled British rescue team left Manchester this weekend bound for Japan and we hope that their involvement may yet save some lives. We wish them well and hope for their safe return. For the rest of us we can only watch events unfold and hope that this proud Japanese nation, whilst bowed, will remain unbroken and will recover from this truly awful event.

Martian Wheatley, who has held the post of Securities and Futures Commission’s chief executive in Hong Kong for six years, will step down in the coming months.

Despite having been the top securities regulator in the city for six years, Mr Wheatley does not speak any Cantonese; and claims this has been an advantage.

This being because he often did not know what was really being said about, or even to him. His interpreters frequently mistranslated messages so as to not offend Mr Wheatley:

Calls of “Resign!” by angry investors who blamed him for failing to protect their money, were interpreted as: “You might want to look for other positions…”

Similarly, “You’re incompetent!” was passed to Mr Wheatley through his earpiece as “Perhaps you could have done better…”

Only when a colleague asked Mr Wheatley how he could remain so calm under such abuse did he realise he was not getting a true picture.

Though Mr Wheatley claimed this gave him an advantage, in truth it is far more important to get a true and accurate translation or interpretation than it is to worry about causing offence, if you were closing an important business deal, interviewing a witness in court, or having medical instructions translated, then accuracy would be your highest concern.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/exchange/2011/03/09/happily-lost-in-translation/

Friday 21st of January saw the conclusion to South Korea’s dramatic rescue of the crew of the Samho Jewelry, who were being held hostage by pirates on board the hijacked ship 800 miles off the coast of Somalia.

During the operation the South Korean Lynx helicopter blared out a recording in Somali: “Throw down your weapons. Then you will be spared.” This caused two of the pirates to surrender peacefully. The helicopter also spoke to the hostages in Korean, a language not spoken by the pirates, telling them to lie down, which allowed the commandos to distinguish who was hostage and who was captor.

None of the South Korean Navy’s unit involved in the operation spoke Somali; the South Korean government searched the country for translators, finding two, who then wrote messages which were passed to a Somali speaking Korean resident in Oman who made the recordings.

The rescue mission resulted in 8 pirates dead, 5 captured, 3 commandos with minor injuries, and all 21 hostages rescued. However, without this method of relay interpreting and translation the casualties on both sides would undoubtedly have been much higher.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/01/27/2011012701014.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12248096

Last week saw the start of Canada’s first translation rights fair “Expand Your Horizons”. The event is being hosted by the Canadian Council for the Arts and is part of the $5 million National Translation Program for Book Publishing.

The idea behind this event was to introduce English- and French-language publishers, in order to encourage cultural exchange within the bilingual country.

“The enhanced Translation Program at the Canada Council is, in my opinion, a fabulous development allowing both English and French publishers to bring hitherto unknown stories to a much larger audience,” says Brian Kaufman, publisher of the Anvil Press.

The two day affair included readings, expeditions, displays of simultaneous translation, in which different translators will read out the same texts in different languages, and even a “speed dating” session aimed at introducing various publishing agents.

“Anything that supports translation in Canada, or anywhere else, is a good thing,” says Daniel Wells, publisher of the small Ontario press Biblioasis

http://www.quillandquire.com/google/article.cfm?article_id=11669

Google has announced the imminent launch of its simultaneous interpreting service that will be used in conjunction with Gtalk. The news has already caused quite a stir in language circles, so The Translation People decided to take a look at what’s on the menu for this new instant multilingual communicator.

Gtalk is Google’s instant messenger and voice over internet protocol (VOIP) that already comes with automatic machine translation that supports the following languages: Chinese (simplified and traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Soon people will be able to communicate using the automatic simultaneous interpreter that will provide real-time voice-to-voice interpretation.

At the press conference for Google’s new Turkish-language voice services, Hurriyetdailynews.com reported on the above simultaneous services and gave a run-down of the technical spec. Based on a ‘semantic code’ rather than a ‘phonological code’, the capabilities are intelligent, so the system improves over time with increased user input. Currently available for iPhones and on the Android platform, its debut on Blackberry is planned in the next few months.

This simultaneous intepretation service may be perfectly acceptable for communicating on instant messenger, and we are not denying the vast amount of work and research involved in producing such linguistic products. However, concerns have been voiced regarding accuracy, differentiating between different accents, dialects and the ability to cope with industry-specific terminology.

However, for international meetings involving multilingual communication, the time will never be right for machine-generated interpretation services instead of qualified, professional human interpreters. Quite simply, the stakes are too high.

Source: www.hurriyetdailynews.com

Hala is a ‘roboreceptionist’ that is being developed in a joint venture supported by two US universities. Hala is her name and helping people is her game claims the promotional video and not only is she bilingual, she is also programmed to be bicultural.

Hala is being developed by Sandiway Fong, an expert in computational linguistics. It is hoped that multicultural societies will be able to benefit from this type of language service, but it is certainly a hefty undertaking – as anybody who has used automatic machine translators or interpreters and eschewed the all-important human element will testify! However, in Qatar, there is already a version of Hala in operation using both English and Arabic languages.

Hala’s intended purpose is for use in ‘computer help-agents, multicultural information kiosks, tour guides and automated international call centres’ and is resplendent in a range of facial expressions. The monitor is even programmed to move like a person’s head when speaking!

Technically, a natural language interface is used that is dependent upon user input to improve linguistically. It is being designed to recognize the use of slang, different accents, to eliminate background noise and to identify when foreign language speakers step up to the mike. For the latter aspect, Fong uses the example of a native Arabic speaker who may want to interact with the computer using the English language. Hala will be able to detect this linguistic and cultural switch and in a bid to avoid misunderstanding, idiomatic expressions will be recognized so that any speech will not be taken literally. Hala is being fed audio resources rather than textual sources as the main focus is on audio output and input rather than the written word.

To add the human touch and to avoid any cultural faux pas, Hala will also have knowledge of typical greetings depending on the user’s language, and shall also take into account local customs. Currently a database is being compiled to ‘train the robot’.

At the moment, Hala operates bilingually in Arabic and English, but if she proves a success, then front of house may never be the same again!

Sources: University of Arizona; Frontsidebus (Bilingual Roboreceptionist is Eager to Address your Cross-Cultural Needs)