Do You Speak-a My Language?

With the rapid growth of Asian wealth, we are seeing a tipping of the balance in favour of language skills over "technical" skills in the trust arena. Most job ads go as far as to list mandatory language skills.

What makes the trust industry unique is that is it an English-based industry. The laws and regulations, the precedents and practices are pretty much stem from English/common law jurisdictions. You can attempt to translate from English, but sometimes there are no words in say German or Mandarin that adequate describe terms commonly used in the trust industry. The over-whelming bulk of trust knowledge is in the west (UK, Channel Islands, Caribbean, North America, and yes, even Australia and maybe throw in Switzerland now). Their trust practitioners typically do not have have Asian language skills, never needed it. Yet, there is a growing pool of potential clients who do not understand English. Yes there are some fine trust people with the requisite language skills....just not enough of them. Hence you now have a dilemma of sorts.

The prevailing thought is that clients (people in general) prefer to do business in their native tongue. I suppose this is no different to the experiences that have occurred in Europe in the past (and present) or the Middle East or Latin America. The Spaniards want to speak and read Spanish, the Koreans want to read and speak Korean. Employers in non-English countries have forever been scrambling to hire people with relevant language skills. However, unlike Europe where many people have second or third language skills including English, much of Asia is far from being bi- or multi-lingual.

Much of Asia is uni-lingual. South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia are predominately one language countries. Outside of the big companies, major hotels, tourist areas, you will be hard pressed to find people who can (truly) read or speak English or other language.

For those who need a Chinese language lesson, Google it, but in a nut shell, the written form was largely the same, but China now uses "simplified" text whereas Taiwan/HK and other overseas Chinese communities retain the "traditional" text. As crazy as it sounds, people (particularly the younger generations) in Taiwan can't read Chinese text/articles/books from China and vice versa as they may not have been educated in the other text. A close analogy would be French and English. Many words are the same or very similar but there are enough differences to make it difficult or impossible to fully comprehend.

In case you didn't know Putonghua is the legal/official/technical name for Mandarin in China. However, different regions have different dialects (Mandarin, Wu/Shanghainese, Hakka, Cantonese, etc.). This can range from mere changes in pronunciation to a radical foreign language. Do not assume all Chinese are able to speak to one another. The Chinese have an expression: "chicken talking to duck" when there is a failure to communicate which is what we have when a south China/Guangdong native talking to a north China/Beijing native. English skills are rapidly increasing in China but again, outside the business community and certain places, English is useless.

The farther south you go, the more convoluted you get.

Hong Kong is officially tri-lingual: English, Putonghua and predominately Cantonese.
Almost all of the business community in HK can read and write English. Speaking English is a little less skilled but usually comprehensible. The Putonghua and simplified text ability of most HK people are probably the same or worse than their English. Some are great/native level and others illiterate.

Singapore is quad-lingual: Malay, English, Mandarin (with simplified text) and Tamil. Given its really diverse cultural make-up, English becomes the most common language. Put 10 Singaporeans in a room and English may be the only common language and general population have perhaps the best English skills of all of Asia, making it very expat- friendly.

Malaysian is officially uni-lingual, being Malay and Rumi in written form. There are certain dialects of Malay and there are some differences in the Malay used in Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei. Of course, if you've been there, there is a very large Chinese community (of all dialects and largely traditional text) and English is a de-facto written business language but not that commonly spoken. Many Tamils too.

The Philippines is officially Filipino and English. Filipino has different dialects but Tagalog should be most prevalent. Outside of Singapore, the Philippines has probably one of the most English-friendly populations, at least in the major cities.

In South Asian countries, there are also a large Indian and Pakistani communities. So throw in some Bengali, Hindi/Urdu, Telugu, Punjabi and some 30 other Indian continent languages. Throw in some Arabic too.

Of course there are some pockets of colonial left-overs: French in Vietnam, Portuguese in Macau, Dutch in Indonesia, Spanish in the Philippines.....

For those hiring, I guess the "right" mix of trust knowledge and language skills depends on the market you are going after. If you're targeting western educated, Forbes list, NRIs or Chinese industrialists then English isn't that big of a problem. They either know it or have the money and resources to hire their own counsel and don't need to speak. For them, skill and technical expertise outweigh the value of chit-chit. Occasionally you run into some clients that want nothing to do with a local advisor....they specifically request a non-native. Kind of a reverse-discrimination.

If you're going after grass-roots, domestic SMEs market then the opposite may hold true. If they are barely affluent or not well educated then sweet-talk may be more persuasive then technical merit.

Although cumbersome, I have not understand why people do not better utilise translators more. I would rather have a translator in the room then have some back-and-forth emails and translations and have processes drag out over days if not weeks. Not necessarily an external professional language translator but someone with the technical-jargon language skills. Sure there are privacy issues and 3's a crowd but if you're a foreign trust lawyer, why not hire and train up and drag a local junior associate/paralegal with the language skills (even from another department if necessary) to a meeting and let them translate for you? If you're a bank trust advisor, why isn't there a local banker helping you? If your client is working with a major accounting firm, why not try to get their (English speaking) partner involved at the meeting? With adequate preparation, they would get 80-90% of your message across. Think about it, a few hours time cost of a paralegal could mean the difference between being rejected or a US$20000 engagement.

Instead, what I'm am hearing and seeing are people with skills being rejected or not even considered for jobs for the reason that they lack language skills. We are seeing "inferior" people get hired and get promoted primarily on the basis they have the language skills. You may want to re-think how you attack such markets if you truly understand the risks. You may want to re-think who you assign cases to. You may want to consider teamwork as opposed to sending people out solo.

I guess it is pointless to address the prospective clients of trust companies who can't comprehend English but if you know someone that needs trust planning and doesn't speak/read English, tell them that getting good advice and service should be more important than getting someone that speaks your language. Again, utilise translators if you have to, it's your right as a consumer to get the best. I would think that if it is a significant chunk of your wealth at stake, you would rather risk going through a clumsy exercise with a 10yr experience trust person who doesn't speak your language rather than risk your wealth dealing with a 5yr experienced trust person who does speak your language. That's just me.

And for you employers out there, there is a thing called liability you always have to be aware of. In the old days, most staff were rarely, if ever, allowed to issue correspondence until they had a certain grade like Manager or Senior Associate or YEARS of experience. Now virtually anyone can send out an email with the Company footer. That makes the Company potentially liable or vicariously liable for the contents of those emails. Do you have any idea the content of the chinese email/letter your staff just sent out? I've seen plenty of fodder for lawsuits.

Which ultimately brings us to capacity issues. As most documentation is in English, does your English-illiterate client have legal capacity to enter into any trust or service contract with you? This will probably be the biggest growth area for litigation in coming years.