Knowledge of the English language does not guarantee a proper understanding of matters concerned.
It often happens that the interpreter is only familiar with one or two meanings of a specific word in English, whereas the meaning you had in mind is unknown to him or her. What will happen next is obvious. Either a strange twist will be given to it or the interpreter thinks it may be omitted. Addressing the foreigner with a normal question like: "what do you mean exactly?" simply won't happen, because they are often too ashamed to ask such a thing.
The other way round, you may take for granted that they won't tell you everything you need to know. That is certainly not a matter of unwillingness, but simply because the interpreter does not know how to translate certain phrases, so these are just left out. To what extent the account in English of the information of a speaker is a lousy one, you may notice yourself.
In addition, the ability to enter into the line of reasoning of a foreigner and to give a good account of it as well at such a meeting should not be overestimated. For this reason often only a very limited part of the necessary exchange of thoughts takes place.
Here, we are not even talking yet about whether your priorities do come across sufficiently and how the Chinese interpreter communicates with the Chinese negotiating partners, are delicate questions being asked or not?
Yujie Services comes each month with a premise that focuses upon a certain aspect of the Chinese business culture where things may go wrong.
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