Language and Business

I thought I’d share with you the gist of an article published in the Financial Times, by journalist Michael Skapinker. The article itself is available online, but only to FT subscribers – so if that doesn’t include you, you’ll have to be content with my summary here.

In a nutshell, Mr Skapinker says:

Learning another language (any language) gives you a better understanding of your own, and helps you to communicate more easily in your own tongue with non-native speakers of because read more

Whoops! As the capital gears up in earnest for the Olympics starting later this week, It hasn’t been a great week for welcoming our Arabic-speaking brothers and sisters to the capital. Two different major London-based businesses have fallen foul of exactly the same typesetting gotcha, resulting in signs and posters proudly displaying gibberish.

Firstly the UK transport company First Capital Connect (FCC), which operates rail services in and around the London area, produced this Olympics security poster:

Next – and perhaps more read more

It should be no surprise that Roy Hodgson got the England football coach’s job.  He is eminently qualified, having coached the Finnish, Swiss and United Arab Emirates national teams and he has managed 21 teams in 8 countries over 36 years. But the English press was slow to see the attraction, with the Sun’s headline of “Bwing on the Euwos (We’ll see you in Ukwaine against Fwance)” (in reference to Hodgson’s pronunciation of the English  ’r’ sound), a particularly read more

We are proud and happy to announce that we have just won two more industry accolades for excellence in languages training.
Accreditation by British Council Business English UK Group
Not only are we accredited to British Council with its demanding assessment criteria, we have also been admitted to the Business English UK Group. This is a select group of only 30 members in the whole of the UK, all of whom are accredited by British Council but also rigorously inspected against a read more