Transcript

Declan O’Dea, international sales manager (marine):

When I go to meetings in Brazil, in the first year going there on my own, I often had to rely on a service partner, for example, er, translating in the meeting because one thing that surprised me initially was that very few people, um, have fluent English. Depending on the level of education, er, some will have, you know, basic English, but, you know, I was relying on most of the customers being able to understand me and me understand them but that wasn’t the case, so fortunately, that we have a couple of service partners out there who would do the translation. However, it is a disadvantage because you lose control of the situation. You’re relying more on your service partner to deliver your sales message rather than yourself, and of course, you don’t know if they’re doing that effectively or talking about a completely different topic. So, that’s why the Portuguese lessons are a great help because even though it just gives us a basic knowledge, sometimes it’s enough just to pick up what’s being said. If you are using a translator, it means you know the topic and sometimes you can jump in and just indicate by your response that you are understanding, er, you know, the flow of the conversation. You don’t have enough to ever conduct the, er, the discussion totally in Portuguese because you won’t have that level of fluency, but often, it’s very beneficial just to have the gist of what’s being said.