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Archive for December, 2009

Does having a certificate of French actually give you the advantage of jobs?

Hi, I'm Canadian and wondered if having a certificate French universityis just as good as taking courses in French to Quebec for freanch goinf immersin during vacations from college? Because I saw that the West gives this certificate, but I do not think immperssive addition to their courses only 6 fernch. I can still put on my resume that I know French and did things like that immersion is not? For I know sont in western ?….. I'm not sure it's worth the pain ……. but at leat I can to science at the same time ….. I'm sure a minor in French plays stronger ….

yes, because it gives you an advantage over others. Put that on your resume, as it remains an asset.

Most Popular Language Translation Providers

Amongst all other languages, French language is widely appreciated worldwide. People often like the lyrical beauty and the romantic feeling in the words of French language. Because the latter half of the 17th century, France continues to be of the world’s main powers and even with this the French language has remained the formal language of numerous well known corporations such as the European Union, Red Cross and even the UN amongst others. Due to the importance of this language, where huge documentation is needed in French language, French Translation service is a pre-requisite these days. Moreover knowing the French language gives one a competitive-edge lately. You also have brighter job prospects if you have the skill and knowledge about French translation. It is because the French economy is one of the giants in the world and even is considered a leader in technological development. You will be surprised to know that there are countless job opportunities awaiting you if you have knowledge of French. Therefore it is rather much required for understanding the French language and even its translation presently. A translator is not merely a person who translates the French language word by word to another language. A good translator need to be well versed with the past, the traditions and even the folks of France in case he wants to get the original basis, style, format, meaning, and even social tone of the actual text. If you want to get quality French translation, it is essential that you hire a qualified and knowledgeable French translator. Plus besides this the translator need to be even aware about the several
styles of the French language and then do the translation suiting the requirements of the employer. “The Parisian French” is the traditional style of French language that is spoken by local communities “French-Canadian Format” is other style of this language that is used normally for business assignments between France and even Canada. So, isnt it essential that the French translator should know all these basic requirements of this language i.e. precisely what you are able to arrive at is the language that may read by the general public or the language that is meaningful to French business delegates. French translation is in great demand these days in economic as well as business fields since huge fimrs use French as a tool for putting all its agendas and even in the meetings. In business, if you wish to make immense profits, you should appoint a perfect French translator who is well versed with the language and helps you achieve your business goals. Having said about the qualities of an ideal translator let’s talk about the benefit that French as a language may grant you in the competitive world of today. It is well known that French is the most commonly used language following English and thus knowing it can be a huge asset to your C.V. A person knowing French is much better prepared compared to person not knowing French to stay ahead in today’s competitive world. Along with French, portuguese translation services is in great demand as its another popular language in the business world. Portuguese translation services are commonly obtainable lately. People are accepting Portuguese language worldwide and a Portuguese Translation service is vital to your business’s survival. As of the German language the service providers grant the German language a translation that is of wonderful potential use to the folks since it enhances their chances of a better placement in life. Whilst getting into a foreign market, German translation is most important. And for that reason while considering to expand your business, the very first thing you might need is the German Translation service. Thus translation services like German, French and Portuguese translational services are in good demand all over the world and are also of great utility to people.
About the Author

Find out more about
Portuguese translation
service at themarketinganalysts.com.

What can I do with a B.A. in Phylosophy and Modern Languages (French and German)?

I am also a native spanish speaker and I speak english too, of course. So in the end of the BA I will speak four languages (Spanish, English, French and German).

But what can I do with a BA in Phylosophy? I need to know. Thank You!

PS. I didn’t asked about doing a MA or PhD. I asked about the BA.

I know I must continue graduate studies, but first I need to know what can I do with a BA in Phylosophy, because of course I need money to pay my Master and PhD. It is not free… not in the USA.

If you go further and get a doctorate in anything that has to do with humanities and the arts, it is a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy). So a BA is just one step toward that. You can do anything with it, but it may not be what you really want, so you may have to go get that Masters. Even if that is not in humanities and arts, when you go get your doctorate, it will be a Ph. D.

“The reason for the name is historical. Most universities used to have only four majors: divinity, law, medicine, and philosophy. All other modern subjects (such as physics, English, math) were part of philosophy, and so most subjects still use PhD as their doctoral degree.” http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_Ph_D_stand_for

“The strongest reason to consider philosophy itself as a profession lies in the fact that Ph.D.’s in every area of academic work are called “Doctorates of Philosophy.” http://www.coas.howard.edu/philosophy/at_howard/professions.html

Beginners Japanese – Choosing the Best Method for Your Language Study

Finding the best way to learn beginners Japanese can be difficult.  It is common for many people to quit just weeks into it because their chosen study materials bore them or they don’t feel that the results are coming quickly enough.  But luckily, there are ways to avoid this.

The decision as to which methods and materials to choose to study Japanese is an important one.  Some options include: enrolling in a Japanese language course at a local college, reading books, finding a private tutor (which is generally very expensive), and computer software programs.  This article will touch on a number of options and provide some information that will be helpful in your decision-making process.

Someone who is starting beginners Japanese will have no trouble finding books on the subject.  You just have to sift though the books to find the ones that provide the best content and explain to you in plain English how to make sense of Japanese.  For an English speaker the Japanese language, with it’s completely different system of writing, can be challenging.  The Japanese language has a significantly different set of grammar and syntax rules as well. The grammar and structure of the Japanese language is one aspect for which book learning is the preferred learning method.

Many community colleges offer adult education classes that are not for college credit and are open to anyone.  With a live instructor in a classroom you are able to ask questions on issues that you may be having trouble with.  Classes are highly recommended, but sometimes it is impossible if there is not one offered in your area or if you cannot fit it into your schedule.

In recent years a new type of study method has been developed: interactive language learning software.  The ability to study whenever, wherever, and for as long or as little as you want makes the computer learning option very attractive.  

If you are interested in beginners Japanese then there are several great interactive language programs available online.  Look for courses that are designed for beginners in the language without having any prior knowledge or understanding of Japanese.  The Japanese language software route, in addition to its convenience, will usually turn out to be the least expensive option, too.

A combination of materials and methods will be necessary for learning beginners Japanese, but fortunately many great choices exist for the Japanese language student.

About the Author

Andrew Bartlett is head writer for Japanese Language Now, which provides free resources and articles about learning the Japanese language including the best programs to use to learn how to speak Japanese.

How do you pronounce Czech words?

I am learning Czech online, but the problem is, the pronouncation is not at all like english, and i am so, so, so confused. I need to know how to pronounce words, before I can do grammar and vocabulary! Please help. is this pronouciation online where I can hear a native Czech speak it? is this patterns in pronouncation? “kdy” sounds like a “g” sound….? Why? Also, how do the weird hat characters are pronounce?

Ok… Your first problem here is that you are thinking of Czech as if it were English… Czech is a phonetic language, which means that every letter has an individual sound, it only makes THAT sound and it ALWAYS makes that sound. There MAY be exceptions, but there are none that I’m aware of. It took me 2 years of living in Prague to FINALLY understand this! lol

While you may think, or you may have been told (which ever the case may be) kdy sounds just like that. It does NOT sound like a g and if it does, it is being mispronounced. Remember this: The Czech “K” is softer than the English. They don’t “spit” as much when they pronounce it as we do. The “D” is also a bit softer and the “Y” sounds like the “I” in igloo does in English.

My fiancee and I met online, and while we were still just chatting she decided to try to help me learn Czech. Unfortunately, it turned out to be rather hopeless for me as I just suck at languages, but here is some of the help she gave me. Hopefully the charactes will show up here… I’m going to retype some of what she said because she doesn’t think like a native English speaker, even though she speaks it as well as one… Which means that things sound differently to her than they do to us. In places in which that is more prominent, I’m going to replace what she told me with the perspective of my ear after having lived here for 3 years.

a – pronounced like the “u” in “luck”
á – “a” in “card”
b – “b” in “big”
c – “ts” in “rats”
? – “ch” in “check”
d – “d” in “dog”
? – sounds similar to “dy” in English, where the “y” sounds like it does in “you”
e – “e” in “bed”
é – “a” in “fad”
? – Sounds similar to “ye” where the “y” sound like it does in “you” and the “e” sounds like it does in “egg”.
f – “f” in “flame”
g – “g” in “gorilla” lol
h – “h” in “horrible”
ch – This one is tricky… Pretend you are trying to “hock a loogie” (I’m hoping you know that term) but you are in class so you have to do it quietly… You place the back of the tongue close to the roof of the mouth and make a sound similar to “h” in “hello” but it will be slightly strangled… I can’t think of any good example in English at the moment…
i – “i” in “sit”
í – “ea” in “leave”
j – “y” in “yellow”
k – “c” in “clone”
l – “l” in “lime”
m – “m” in “monkey”
n – “n” in “never”
? – Similar to the “ñ” in “jalapeño” but a bit softer…
o – “o” in “fog”
ó – “aw” in “law”
p – “p” in “pork”
q – ?????????????????
r – The Czech “r” is slightly trilled as it is in the Scot or Irish accent, though not quite as sharp. Just don’t forget that there is always a slight “d” sound in the Czech “r” and you’ll be ok…
? – This one actually hurts to say. This character is so difficult that some Czechs can’t pronounce it and your tongue has to be a bit acrobatic to pull it off… It is something like this: “rdzhrd”. That is how it may look in English. If you remember that the “r” is trilled, then it looks more like this: “rzhre”. This one is NOT easy to explain in type and there is NOTHING like it in English… There have been MANY Czechs that have tried to help me with this one, but if they don’t think like a native English speaker, then they just have a hard time understanding how it sounds to us…
s – “s” in “stem”
š – “sh” in “shack”
t – Just like with the “k” the “t” is quieter and softer than it is in English…
? – Just like the “?” and the “?”, just add a soft “y” as in you to the end of the already softened t sound.
u – “u” in “bush” or “butcher”
ú and ? – “oo” in “fool” The difference in these two is basically their placement within the word, but for this purpose, I’m not going to go into that at the moment…
v – “v” in “venom”
w – This may actually be the trickiest one, only because it depends on the individual speaking it. Usually, it is pronounced just like “v” but there are some who have adapted the more English way of speaking and choose to pronounce it the way we do.
x – “x” in “sex”
y – “i” in “live”
ý – “ee” in “keep”
z – “z” in “zero”
ž – Sounds close to the “z” in “Azure”.

Just remember… Czech is not English. There are no silent characters. Even when it sounds like there are to us, if you listen to them the way they do, you can hear it… For example… In order to make the long “I” sound, as in “Ice” you have to combine the Czech characters “A” and “J”. If “ice” were a Czech word, it would be spelled “Ajs”. The long “o” sound is made by combining “o” and “u”. If “toast” were a Czech word, it would be spelled “Toust”. The long “a” sound is made by combining “E” and “J”. If “hate” were a Czech word, it would be spelled “hejt”.

I know some of this is confusing, but I hope it has been some help.

I would also suggest downloading Skype, getting a headset and looking for Czechs on Skype to talk to. You will often find Czechs that are willing to help you with Czech if you will help them with English.

Sourcing Superstars: Alok Aggarwal & Marc Vollenweider, Evalueserve

SSON: Tell us how Evalueserve got started: how did you meet and how did you start to do business together?

Alok Aggarwal: I basically came to the US in 1980, did my PhD in computer science in Hopkins in 1984, joined IBM’s Research division in 1984 and then was there for 16 years; I started IBM Research Lab in Delhi, and became the director in 1997. This was the time that dotcoms were taking off, so one of the strategies was that we should open a lab in India because we were losing researchers to dotcom start-ups in the US. So I was given the charge to open a lab in India and in 1998 I moved with the family to Delhi; I started the lab in April 1998 and grew it to about 35 PhDs and 35 Masters.

Marc Vollenweider: I’m 100% Swiss, graduating as an electrical engineer with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Then I joined McKinsey as a greenhorn, as a business analyst; I spent a year at McKinsey – this was 1990 – then in 1991 went to INSEAD in Paris for my MBA. Then I rejoined McKinsey and stayed in Switzerland and got elected partner in 1998. Then in 1999 I moved to India with McKinsey as one of the partners in the consulting practice, where I was in charge of the healthcare practice and lots of other stuff. And then I also got the responsibility for the so-called McKinsey knowledge centre, which at the time was an initiative led and pioneered by Rajat Gupta, the then global head of McKinsey.

The goal there was essentially to come up with a research hub that would support the consultants around the world with high-quality quick research. So say you had a question – how many companies were there with these and these criteria – you’d send an email to India and some busy bee worked on it and sent back the answer in a ZIP file and then in the morning you’d come back to the office and you have the answer ready for you. We started out from an initial team of 12 and ramped this up to 120 MBAs between the years 1999 and 2000. And this was a pure captive, only catering to McKinsey internally. And then it became clear to me that this could be an interesting third-party business model, so that’s why in March/April in 2000 I started thinking about setting up my own company.

AA: We met, interestingly, because of a birthday party for the kids, who were going to the American Embassy School in Delhi. This was, I think, early May 2000. When we started talking we realised that he was thinking about one aspect of research and analytics and I was thinking about another aspect; so, why don’t we create a company that provides all kinds of research and analytics services and other high-end services related to having knowledge expertise? So we both met several times during that period – July/August 2000 – and quit McKinsey and IBM in November 2000 and started Evalueserve (which stands for “evaluation services”) in December 2000.

SSON: When you set up by yourselves was there any McKinsey money involved?

MV: No, there was a clean cut. Alok and I put in the money, our own money, and there is no institutional money from McKinsey. We’re privately held, and we hold the vast majority, and then we have a Swiss private equity investor, you could call him a super angel… So during the initial years 2001, 2002, 2003 we needed some money to grow because we turned profitable in 2002, which is actually pretty good, but still if you then grow at a rate of 100% the single biggest capital consumption item is actually not office space or computers: it is accounts receivables. Because you essentially prefinance your revenue; because the cost of people on your balance sheet, they’re there but you don’t get the revenue. So you need to balance that and then you grow at 100% and you need some money, even though you’re profitable. So we picked up some money in very small slices and we had five mini-rounds – maybe even micro-rounds, you know, $100,000 here, $100,000 there – over the course of the next five years. We haven’t taken up any money since 2005.

AA: Seven and a half years later, we are about 2,500 people worldwide. Out of these 2,500, about 60 of us are client engagement managers; so we do business development, we do sales, and with the right hand we hold our clients and with the left hand we hold our professionals in our back-end research centres. Because we are very involved in client delivery and client management, all 60 work out of home offices; we have about 28 in the US, two in Toronto in Canada, about 25 in Europe of which 11 or 12 are in the UK, with the UK being our second-largest territory from a sales perspective. Then we have one in Shanghai, one in Hong Kong, one in Singapore, one in Australia, and one in India. So that’s roughly our team of about 60 people.

Our back-end offices, which are really bricks-and-mortar offices, are in China, Romania, India, and Chile – so rather than “BRIC” we call them “CRIC-and-mortar”… India was the first one that we opened in December 2000; we currently have about 2,130 people in India. China was the second one, with 160; we provide services in Japanese, Chinese and Korean languages and related knowledge services out of there in these three languages. In Chile, we are based in Valparaiso, about 45 minutes from Santiago; we provide services in Spanish and Portuguese from there, and we cover the Latin American market as well as the Hispanic market in the US, which has been growing quite rapidly – it’s about 10% of US GDP right now and is expected to double in the next 20 years. This helps us not just in covering these languages and various countries and cultures and customs; this also helps us in providing 24/6 average because rather than people working during night-time in India or China, we’re able to transfer – in a smooth manner – work to Chile.

Romania is particularly interesting for us because the place where we are, Cluj, is a university town with quite a few people who speak German very well – so we will be able to cover Germany, Austria and Switzerland quite well. Also we can cover Eastern Europe, in particular Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and so on, Romania itself, Poland, Hungary; that area is growing quite rapidly with the oil outflow from Russia and some of the other eastern states, and hence expected to do very well. So with that we are basically providing knowledge services, most of them are research and analytics, some of them are middle-office work, but all are knowledge services for banks, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare, technology, media, telecom, and so on.

SSON: What do you think have been the biggest challenges you’ve come across during the life of the business, and how have you managed to get past them?

MV: I think it’s fairly straightforward. These 2,500 guys need to be busy. Marketing and sales, that’s the single biggest challenge, always; initially – we call it the “double chasm” – initially when we went to meet people we went in and said “hi this is Evalueserve”, and they said “oh, so you want me to outsource my strategic research?”  And this was chasm number one, because nobody had done this before: it was a completely new concept; nobody had any idea that this could be done. So that was a huge hurdle.

AA: Obviously there did not exist this kind of offshore outsourcing kind of work until the 2000, 2001 timeframe. The only company that was doing it was McKinsey Knowledge Centre, with about 120 people when Marc left; American Express was doing some amount of credit card analytics, probably another 100 people; and General Electric out of its captive was doing maybe another 200-250 people doing card analytics. So total number of people at the end of 2000 when we started was only about 500-1,000. This industry has grown to about 75,000 in India alone, if you look at the whole knowledge services or knowledge process outsourcing industry, so there has been a fairly strong growth in a fairly short period of time. And that of course comes with its own challenges, because humans are not like robots; the skill that knowledge services industry requires and the knowledge process outsourcing industry requires is a fairly detailed deep knowledge and people need to get some sense of it – you learn partly by experience and by doing the projects.

MV: And then the second element was they were saying “and you do this from India?” and then we have to say: “Yeah, it works really well from India”. This is really the double chasm. And to overcome this, to launch a new concept, that was really the challenge. And then the next challenge was to build a scaleable sales force. You know, now we have about 50 salespeople and these are obviously highly expensive people. So we have to find a model that was actually scaleable and was economically feasible. And that I think was the second really really big challenge.

SSON: How do you go about recruiting those specific skill sets?

MV: By now we know what works. So these would be people with, for example, an ex-Reuters background, or an ex-research background where they had to sell research – salespeople in the services-for-research domain, I would call it. So these are the kind of people that work very well. Then there are maybe slightly more remote or people who have worked in their respective industries, say in marketing departments or so, and have an angle into sales – who want to move into sales. So you can say the common elements are that there is a sales angle, there is the understanding of how professional services work angle, and then there is an industry angle, and if these three elements work together well, then usually we have successful sales people like that: typically between 30-40 years old, and roughly in that space of capability.

SSON: What differentiates Evalueserve from the competition?

AA: Four or five things. One of them is our geographical reach at this point in time. We are more of a global organisation, so as I mentioned earlier we can provide services almost seamlessly 24/6 without having to have people working the night shift or the graveyard shift. The second is that with the very fact that we are 2,500 people, we are able to bring in areas that other people may not be covering, so we have a fairly strong vertical for example in oil, gas and utilities right now, that I would say most of our competitors do not have.

The third is that – I would call it serendipity as I explained earlier how Marc and I got together, it’s not that we had some great brand vision, it’s just happened by chance more than anything else – we are about 2 ½ years ahead of the competition. We were the first ones to start this whole KPO services business, define it and start it as a third party in a very well-defined manner, and fortunately we still, I believe, have a two-to-three-year advantage over most of our competitors. I mean for patent drafting, in intellectual property, we often see some of the comments made by our competitors and we say, “yeah, we were making the same sort of comments in 2005-2006”. So we know at what level of evolution and what state of evolution these people are in.

MV: Then I think it’s a portfolio of services which is very unique in our case; we’re purely research- and analytics-based, so we don’t do any business process outsourcing, or IT outsourcing, nothing of that – our 2,500 people are only doing bespoke research and analytics. This is how we differentiate against, say, an Infosys BPO, or a Genpact, who are also trying to have some activity in the KPO space. But we are pure-play. We only do that – obviously with the necessary focus. There are some niche players, and we are broader than such niche players.

And I think our service portfolio being investment research, which is sort of the space of investment banks, hedge funds, that kind of area; business research which is more like what markets do, what players do, what companies do, these kind of questions; market research which is more phone interviews; then data analytics which is more statistical software packages which you use to analyse large data sets; and then finally there’s technology analysis which is around patent analytics. That is a unique offering, which is highly synergistic in our case, that very few other people have.

SSON: What qualifies as “KPO”? And are there any limits to what can be outsourced?

AA: It’s a very interesting thing. When we came up with this word, I think we had a very specific meaning. We very rarely use the word KPO in talks with our clients because to me it has become a word like “love”: everyone “loves” everyone else, but what does the word “love” mean?

What happened was, when we were starting there were a lot of call centres and BPO companies who were doing low-end finance and accounting, low-end HR outsourcing, credit-card processing work and so on. In 2001, 2002 – even 2003 – some of the news media and journalists would ask us what we did; we would say we’re providing research analytics, knowledge analytics services out of India, and they would always say “oh so you’re another BPO – is that a fair way of saying it?” And we would say “that’s true, but you know knowledge services are fundamentally different from just what a BPO is”.

Marc and Ashish [Gupta; Evalueserve’s CCO and India country head] were discussing this in 2003, and they basically said “we are actually a KPO” because knowledge is part of what we do, and the more we are able to provide knowledge, the more we can charge – whereas in BPO the charges are fairly well defined because the processes are well defined: the operator or help-desk that is answering calls, they can’t really charge much more. But here if you go up the value-chain – if the person has ten years’ experience in telecom and is able to provide deeper knowledge – even out of India we can charge $75-$80 per hour. In the US the corresponding rates are more like $400 per hour.

So in August or September 2003 one of the journalists from the Economic Times asked Ashish the usual question, and Ashish said “actually you know we are a KPO, not a BPO”, and he told me about it later. The journalist didn’t pick it up completely, he wrote an article about it and he said “Evalueserve talks about being a KPO” and I actually – being a researcher at heart – started doing research and we eventually defined what KPO was and how big the market size would be – about $17billion worldwide – outsourcing to low-wage countries like India and the Philippines and China. I gave a talk at Bell Communications in New Jersey in December 2003 and we wrote a paper in April 2004, and fortunately within a year the news media in India took onto the word KPO and it spread like fire.

So the difference between KPO and BPO is fundamentally the following: in BPO the process has already been well-defined, like how you’re going to answer a particular call, what are the levels of escalation that there would be and so on. In KPO on the other hand there is no such process. So you go to a patent attorney, for example, and you ask the patent attorney “we want to take a portion of your work and do it out of India” and he’ll say “are you kidding? There’s no way you can do it. The person who helps me out is sitting next door and we discuss the write-up with each other at least 3 or 4 times a day; this is an art, not a science, and there is no process involved.”

So the first thing in a typical KPO project is to actually convince the person and take a portion of that art out, and make a process of it so it can be moved to India, China, Chile, etc. But because it can never be completely taken out – because indeed there is a portion of it which is art which that patent attorney who is the “rock star” or the equity research analyst who is the “rock star” has in their heads – that 15%-20 % still remains in their heads and it has to come back, and for the project to be completed that 15%-20% still has to be completed by the person who is really knowledgeable and is in that country or that particular domain to do it. So that x versus hundred minus x as we call it, where x per cent is being done in the US or the UK, and 100 minus x is being done in the Philippines or India or wherever, is what differentiates a BPO from a KPO.

So, first, there is no process which can just be thrown over and get it back; secondly, knowledge is an important aspect of it, the higher you go up the knowledge chain the more in fact you can charge for the project, and thirdly some finishing touches – advice, opinion etc – which could be anywhere from 5% all the way to I would say in some cases 40%, would have to be provided by the front-end person.

SSON: Where’s most of your research going? Is the direction changing over time – is there more, for example, technological patent-based research now?

MV: It’s growing proportionally. When you look at the breakdown we would do about 40 per cent of our work in investment research, for equity analysis for example, for investment banks, or for funds; about 25 per cent in the area of business research, which is more like “what is this market doing, here is a customized newsletter, here is a company profile,” that kind of work; then we would do about 12 per cent market research, and about the same size in intellectual property, and the rest is data analytics and knowledge technology. In terms of client breakdown we have again about 40 per cent in the financial industry; about I would say 20 per cent is professional services – consulting firms, research firms, law firms – and the rest is corporate.

SSON: And is that changing at the moment?

MV: Not really, no – it’s pretty consistent actually. It’s growing more or less in line. It’s actually pretty surprising, it’s not really changing. We thought that the investment research would suffer a bit because of all this subprime crisis and so on but that’s not at all the case; in fact it increases the pressure on these companies to outsource.

SSON: So what’s going to be the next big sector to hit KPO?

AA: I think pharmaceutical is very prone to it. The problem that the pharmaceutical area is going through is that the cost of producing the drugs and getting them approved by the FDA of the US, for example, has been rising at an enormous pace. Last year, for example, only 26 drugs were approved, and $39 billion was spent in research, development and approval. At the same time the population in most of the developed countries has been aging, so there has been more and more need for the drugs but there has not been that kind of money that can be spent on it. Whether or not the US moves into a socialized medical system is becoming immaterial as days go by: it basically is already socialized to a great extent with Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs.

So these pharmaceutical drug companies will have to do two things. One, they will have to find other markets to sell to, which will be India, China, other emerging markets, on the one hand – but again there the people don’t have that kind of purchasing power, so they will have to price their drugs lower; and the second is that they will have to somehow figure out ways of reducing the cost of their drugs. First inventing them and then getting approved – so a very, very ripe area where KPO would be beneficial for them.

SSON: How do you think the drivers behind outsourcing are changing and what are the greatest threats?

MV: OK. Sometimes people say costs are increasing: increasing salaries and what have you. But in our case I have a reasonably simple answer to that. I say in our case we have a very simple strategy: we’re going to be in the five lowest-cost highest-skilled locations in the world. Which means that by definition I can prove mathematically that I am always going to have a cost advantage. Because, right, you’re always going to be in the lowest-cost highest-skill locations. So that’s going to be fine, I guess.

But the biggest challenges will be to add value to clients. This is not a threat, it’s more a challenge, because clients want more value-addition, more thinking, more – especially in our case – insight. They want productivity, they want global reach, they want 24×5… So when you look at how the service level has evolved in the past few years it’s been amazing. Today I can do things here which have been completely unimaginable even two years ago. So the speed with which things have been developing is increasing, actually. It’s not just linear, it’s even increasing.

The second point is, I think, the war for talent. The demands that people are putting on outsourcing players means that they have to have the capability to train higher, and develop people, and that means you have to have very very solid training processes – we for example have an initiative called Care for People, which includes different career track models, work/life balance, and lots of things. Getting this done is critically important. The third thing is leadership. Especially in the new economies you find that there is very little experienced leadership available, so you have to essentially coach people extremely well into leadership positions they would otherwise never be in. We have some people who are about 30 years of age and lead about 120 people. Now when I was that age I led about 15. So I think creating this leadership from within is a major element.

Other than that I don’t think there are major challenges because as we usually tend to say, the players in this space should actually collaborate in the sense of growing the market – because the largest part of the market hasn’t even been addressed yet, which is work that’s still being done inside companies – or even not being done! I mean the people who work with us best actually use us for growth; they don’t use us to cut costs. Very interesting, you know? They come up with new ideas and they use us to get their growth done. And these are the people who really use us very well. Maybe the war for talent thing is probably the biggest threat, because if the companies don’t do that well, they will lose out. That’s the thing.

SSON: Finally, India dominates the offshore outsourcing market and has done for some time. Do you think that dominance is unassailable in the short-to-medium term, and if not why not?

AA: India has been growing so rapidly, both in terms of outsourcing but equally importantly in the area of domestic industry, which has been growing very rapidly. Both the outsourcing exports industry and the domestic industry have the same demand, taking the same or similar kinds of people, and hence the wages are going higher and attrition is quite large. I think even bigger than wage increases the risk is about attrition: what we call “job-hopping”.

I think one of the biggest challenges – and unfortunately again because these folks are young, they don’t actually realise it at this point in time – that India will face is this cultural shift that seems to be happening among the youngsters, the young people who are graduating, who just change jobs at the drop of a hat – and I would go further, maybe even without the drop of a hat. They say “ok this is boring, let’s move or” or “I’m getting a 15% raise from the next company, let me get my annual raise from Evalueserve, let me float my resume around, get another 15% raise from another company.”

What they don’t realise is that every time they move from one job to another, the last three months they’re not really doing any work for Evalueserve. And the first three months they’re learning the culture and the ways to do work at the other company. And hence six months of their life is wasted, where they haven’t really learnt much, and since this is all about knowledge, and learning, they’re screwed. They do this job-hopping four or five times and by the time they’re about seven years in the game, they’ve wasted about two years in the whole process. They basically have thrown themselves completely out of the market.

Because if we later look at their resume, even if we were to send their resume to a client saying we wanted to use this person, the likelihood is that the client is going to refuse, saying “you cannot use this person for my work, he seems to be changing jobs all the time, I don’t know what kind of knowledge he has, what kind of person he is”, and that as a whole – and again that is not particularly only to KPO, this is true about the Indian export industry in general, the export services industry which is IT outsourcing, BPO and KPO exports – is probably the biggest challenge to the Indian services exports industry.

 

 

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About the Author

Jamie Liddell has worked in journalism since he was a 17-year-old cub reporter for The Tico Times, Costa Rica’s highly regarded English-language weekly newspaper. Holding an MA in English from Clare College, Cambridge University, Jamie came to SSON from the world of overseas property publishing where he worked on the industry’s best-selling publications for the UK and Ireland, and gave seminars at consumer and b2b exhibitions and conferences internationally.

R. K. Narayan’s Attitude Towards the English Language

R. K. Narayan’s attitude towards the English language:

a postcolonial posture, a utilitarian gesture

Abstract

This paper is intended to examine R. K. Narayan’s attitude towards the English language as reflected in his essays. Narayan (1906-2001) was born and grown up in a period when English education was already institutionalised in the Indian Sub-continent. Like other Indian writers in English, such as Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand, he received English education and used to write in English from the beginning of his literary career up to the end. However, he is seen to have used the English language and literary form to scrutinise colonialism and depict the Indian society continually under change due to the colonial rule. A part of this endeavour seems to be evident in Narayan’s attitude towards the English language. Narayan’s position in this regard is deemed quite ambivalent and complex —he is aware that English is the language of the colonist, yet he is found to have accepted it for practical reasons. That is, his attitude towards the English language appears to have resulted from and shaped by the reality prevailing in the postcolonial setting.

Keywords: R. K. Narayan, attitude, English language, postcolonial posture, utilitarian gesture

–– I ––

The study of the English language and literature in the postcolonial context seems to be “a densely political and cultural phenomenon” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins 1989: 2-3) and consequently comes under the purview of the postcolonial writers. One of the fundamental assertions of postcolonialism is that the English language and literature have played a very significant role in propounding colonial ideology aimed at the survival and consolidation of the colonial rule (Walder 1998). In other words, the construction of English literary education is part of the colonial cultural design (Viswanathan 1995). Many postcolonial writers have attempted to address the issue of cultural domination through the English language and literature. For instance, Thiong’o (1995) opines that the central position given to the study of the English language and literature in Africa emanates from the assumption of the cultural superiority of the West. This is why, he prescribes that the English departments should be abolished from the universities in Africa. Indian novelist Raja Rao (2000: v) states that English is the language of the intellect, not of emotion; and in India English should therefore be appropriated to the level of “a dialect which will some day prove to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American”. Hence, postcolonial writing uses the language of the colonists but adapts it to the discourse of the colonised. It is performed by two processes: abrogation and appropriation (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins 1989). Abrogation stands for challenging the notion of universality as claimed by the colonists with regard to the language. Appropriation, on the other hand, is the use of the imperial language to express the cultural experience of the colonised. This is a process by which imperial English is made to encounter vernacular languages. Standard English words are used in many new meanings, and, in turn, the English language receives many new words from indigenous languages. Besides, postcolonial literature emerges out of the tension between these two pulls. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989: 39) rightly maintain-

… in one sense all post-colonial literatures are cross-cultural because they negotiate a gap between ‘worlds’, a gap in which the simultaneous processes of abrogation and appropriation continually strive to define and determine their practice.

Thus, challenging and overhauling the Eurocentric notion of language become an essential part of literary decolonisation (Loomba 2001).

As Boehmer (1995) illustrates, almost all the aspects of the world of the colonised including the language of instruction and commerce were dominated by the empire. The colonial education of the middle class people then tended to create ‘mental colonization’ among them: “English-language and -literature instruction played a key role in naturalizing British values” (Boehmer 1995:169). By the early 20th century, students from the colonies were heavily influenced by the excellence of the English language and literature. This factor seems to account for the “syncretic” nature of the postcolonial society, which cannot be compartmentalised into either a purely traditional or a purely alien. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989: 110) contend, “The construction of ‘pure’ cultural value is always conducted within a radically altered dynamic of power relations”. Therefore, a postcolonial reading of R. K. Narayan’s works, especially essays with regard to his attitude to the English language would likely to reveal that he endeavours to formulate a synthesis between the Indian element and the colonial one.

–– II ––

The colonial education that Narayan received might have influenced his views on the English language since in the classroom Narayan had to see English as the first language, his native language being a second language (Walsh 1982). English was the most prestigious subject due to political, administrative, social, economic and scientific reasons. Although Tamil, the language of Narayan’s province, and Sanskrit, the classical language of India, were taught in the school, they were considered inferior in status and provided occasions for jokes. Narayan (2001b: 464) admits this in his essay “English in India”-

But in the classroom neither of these two languages was given any importance; they were assigned to the most helpless among the teachers, the pundits who were treated as a joke by the boys, since they taught only the ‘second language’, the first being English as ordained by Lord Macaulay when he introduced English education in India.

Besides encountering textbooks in English in his school and college, Narayan extensively read English literature outside his syllabus. His father’s library at home and his school library were crammed with books on English literature (Narayan 2001b). Narayan took the full opportunity of the libraries and enthusiastically read Scott, Dickens, Rider Haggard, Marie Corelli, Moliere, Pope, Marlowe, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy and others (Narayan 1995). He was also in touch with the current literary scene through various magazines such as Little Folks, Nineteenth Century and After, Cornhill, Strand Magazine, Mercury, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement and The Manchester Guardian. The cumulative impact of this massive reading of the English literature was that he became very well versed in the English language. As a writer, Narayan opted for the English language simply because it suited him better than his mother tongue. In an interview, he says-

I never had any idea that I was writing in another tongue. My whole education has been in English from the primary school, and most of my reading has been in the English language . . . I wrote in English because it came to me very easily. (qtd. by Sundaram 1988)

It was then very unlikely that a writer like Narayan who learned the English language to such an extent as to produce his works in it, would reject or censure it easily on nationalistic grounds.

–– III ––

India became free from the colonial rule in 1947, but the linguistic and cultural implication of colonialism still remained operative, serving two conspicuously unavoidable purposes: a unifying linguistic agency for administration and a means of wider international communication (Kachru: 1995). In the mean time, the issue of either the acceptance or the rejection of the English language became one of the hot debates since the beginning of Indian nationalist movement in the 1920s. Gandhi’s ‘Swadeshi Movement’ was aimed at embracing all that was swadeshi (indigenous), and hence English being a foreign language came under the scrutiny of this movement. The use of the English language by the Indians was often denounced, and Hindi was seen as a possible substitute. In his novel Waiting for the Mahatma, Narayan (2001a: 27) has made Gandhi declare that he will not deliver his lecture in English because “It’s the language of our rulers. It has enslaved us”. As Leela Gandhi (1998: 147) points out, Gandhi’s rejection of the English language stems from his belief in “the legitimate cultural primacy” of the Indian languages.

Nevertheless, the attempted ban on the English language created two contradictory positions among the Indian writers. The first group consisting of the writers using the indigenous languages protested against writing in English on nationalistic grounds. The second group constituted of the Indian writers in English continued writing in the English language to express their Indian experience. These polarities existing at the end of the colonial period surfaced with renewed vigour and extended dimensions after the independence of India (Dharwadker and Dharwadker 1996). Indian lawmakers framed a fifteen- year time limit to upgrade Hindi to the position of the official language of India. However, this project of expelling English within a fixed period yielded almost no result. Iyengar (2000) presents sufficient statistics of 1957 to show that there was no spectacular advance of Hindi, and the position of English as an Indian official language remained the same – English was still the language of inter-state communication or the sole lingua franca, the language of higher administration, law courts, education and examinations. Resultantly, parliamentary enactment gave English the status of “an associate language” with Hindi.

That Narayan (1988a: 14) was aware of the debate on the position of the English language in his country is evident in his essay “Fifteen Years”-

. . . various causes, practical, political, etc. have demanded the abolition of English from our midst. It is almost a matter of national propriety and prestige now to declare one’s aversion to this language, and to cry for its abolition.

There was a time when many people blindly admired English, and the ability to talk and write in the English language earned great prestige for a person. Notwithstanding, at present the patriotic fervour of the people made the language a hotcake for debate. Narayan (2000) depicts the same situation in his first novel Swami and Friends dealing with the effect of the colonial rule on the Indian people. The novel discloses that while people feel antipathy towards the British, they are also attracted to the paraphernalia of the colonial power. As a result, the colonial language has been the signifier of power and dignity. In the Albert Mission School, English is the most prestigious subject. Sankar’s name is well known because he can speak to the teachers in English in the open class (Swami and Friends 7); and likewise Rajam’s friends respect him because he speaks very good English, “exactly like a ‘European’” (Swami and Friends 12). In “Fifteen Years”, Narayan (1988a) takes a postcolonial view on this issue, showing his awareness that English is an alien language, yet advocating its use in India for practical purposes. According to him, the day-to-day reality has made it impossible for the Indians to castigate the English language.

Narayan (1988a) presents an imaginary conversation between an Indian judge and the personified English language. The judge puts forth the verdict that the English language must leave the country-

When we said, ‘Quit India,’ we meant it to apply to Englishmen as well as their language. And there does not seem to be much point in tolerating you in our midst. You are the language of the imperialist, the red-tapist, the diabolical legalist, the language which always means two things at the same time. (“Fifteen Years” 15)

Contrariwise, in reply to the judge, the English language points out that it has been firmly rooted in the Indian soil. In other words, having been practised for two hundred years, the English language has been part and parcel of the Indian society including its education, cultural activities, government machinery, law courts, business, trades, sports, aviation, navigation, agriculture, science, technology and so forth. In the essay, although the judge feels that the language must quit India, he cannot present any solid ground why it should be so; rather he remains confused and his advocacy inconclusive.

Hence, Narayan (1988a) is found to claim that the English language has been an integral part of the Indian reality. In fact, in the Indian context, it has been turned into the Indian English rather than the English of England. Narayan’s (1988a: 8) position seems to echo the statement of Iyengar (2000): “English has become ours, it is not less ours for being primarily the Englishman’s or the American’s”.

–– IV ––

Narayan (1988a) obviously objectively thinks over the case of Hindi, that is, its establishment as a state language within a limited period of time. And in the essay “To a Hindi Enthusiast”, he suggests that it is impossible to impose Hindi as a state language in a set time limit. Quoting the aphorism from Shakespeare that “ripeness is all”, he argues ripeness cannot be forced by a government order or by the prescription of a commission. Like a sociolinguist (e.g. Hudson 1981), he maintains that the growth of a language is a natural process, which cannot be artificially stopped. Narayan (1988a: 26) then advocates the cause of English by adopting a postcolonial view-

For me, at any rate, English is an absolutely swadeshi language. English, of course, in a remote horoscopic sense, is a native of England, but it enjoys, by virtue of its uncanny ability, citizenship in every country in the world. It has sojourned in India longer than you or I and is entitled to be treated with respect. It is my hope that English will soon be classified as a non-regional Indian language.

It is thus evident that Narayan (1988a) is not advocating the servile imitation of the English language or the culture represented and spread by it. Rather, his intention is to absorb it into the grand procession of the Indian languages. The English language would be treated as one in the long list of the Indian languages and dialects, and its inclusion would not at all affect the total pattern of the language habit of the Indian people.

–– V ––

While Narayan (1988b: 28) seems to accept the presence of English in the day-to-day Indian reality, he also analyzes the cause of its popularity, commenting in “To a Hindi Enthusiast” that “half the charm of English was engendered by the manner in which its schoolbooks were produced”. The high quality print and coloured frontispiece exhibiting some London Bridge, rivers and towers, and the carefully selected contents with relevant black and white pictures have played a significant role in establishing the English language in this country. Narayan’s experience is consistent with that of Anita Desai (1996: 222) who writes in her essay “A Coat in Many Colors”-

Hindi texts we were given to study were, in contrast to the English ones, dry, pedantic, unimaginative, and unrelated to the simplicities of everyday life. They were also unattractively printed and published, a not unimportant factor to a child who, at that age, judges by the feel, the touch, and the taste of things.

It is then evident that both Narayan and Anita Desai are of the opinion that the highly sophisticated and impressive appearance of English books is responsible for their popular appeal to the people in India.

On the whole, Narayan’s position respecting the issue of the English language is rather complex. He seems to say that it could have been better if Hindi had taken the place of the English language in India, but presently it seems impossible to put Hindi to that exalted status and, therefore, it will be wise to accept the position of the English language. Again, when Narayan speaks in favour of the English language, he does not mean the King’s English; rather he means the language that has been coloured with the Indian context and filled with the vocabulary from the native languages and dialects. In his essay “A Literary Alchemy”, Narayan (1988c: 197) puts forward his idea of the Indian English which, he thinks, is the inevitable outcome of a natural process-

We have fostered the language for over a century and we are entitled to bring it in line with our own habits of thought and idiom. Americans have adapted the English language to suit their native mood and speech without feeling apologetic, and have achieved directness and unambiguity in expression.

That is, Narayan is suggesting that the Indian people should violate the “purist” conception of the English language and insert some new expressions suiting the Indian context. To Narayan, expressions like “Please do the needful” and “And oblige” are very much pertinent to the Indian context. Although inappropriate according to the “purist” standard of the English language, these expressions are a “masterpiece of economy and contribution to the English language” (“A Literary Alchemy” 198). While Narayan is considering the use of the Indian English, he is, at the same time, proposing to reconstruct the universal criteria of the language. In other words, he is abrogating and appropriating the language.

Narayan (2001c: 480) seems to be mocking at the idea of adhering to the principles laid down by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which, in his essay “After the Raj” is described as “a sacred cow for us in India”. He expresses the same attitude in his essay “English in India” where he asserts that for maximum benefit the English language must reach the grassroots level of India. And here too he is speaking not of standard English but of its Indian variety: “the language must be taught in a simpler manner, through a basic vocabulary, simplified spelling, and explained and interpreted through the many spoken languages of India” (Narayan 2001c: 468).

–– VI ––

Narayan shows his awareness to the complex issues regarding the position of the English language in the colonial India. He is conscious of the foreign origin of the language and its imperial connotation. Notwithstanding, he clearly depicts how the English language has established a firm root in India and become an essential part of its social reality. Thus, Narayan’s voice is rather polyphonic.

That is to say, Narayan seems to believe that it is impossible to eliminate the English language from the social reality of India. And he pragmatically suggests the acceptance of the language in its Indianized form. Hence, Narayan’s attitude towards the English language is formed by the postcolonial reality and utilitarian value. To sum up, as Iyengar (2000: 359) comments, Narayan-

“uses the English language much as we used to wear dhoties manufactured in Lancashire— but the thoughts and feelings, the stirrings of the soul, the wayward movements of the consciousness, are all of the soil of India”.

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Desai, Anita, “A Coat in Many Colors.” South Asian English: Structure, Use and Users. Ed. Robert J. Baumgardner. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. 221-30.

Dharwadker, Aparna and Vinay Dharwadker, “Language, Identity, and Nation in Postcolonial Indian English Literature.” English Postcoloniality: Literatures from Around the World. Eds. Radhika Mohanram and Gita Rajan. Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1996.

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About the Author

Associate Professor, Department of English, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, MA in English Language and PhD in Applied Linguistics & ELT, interested in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, testing, error analysis, methodology, poetry, literary criticism, etc