MBA商务英语课堂讲义
戴若愚老师
dryswjtu@126.com
许健，你好！附件是本期上课要讲的内容。
我们上课的教材是《工商管理英语教程》主编 张初愚 西安交通大学出版社，当当网上好像有售，请转告同学们，谢谢！ 戴
―(1) An earthquake is a sudden tremor or movement of the earth's crust, which originates at or below the surface. (2) There are two main causes of earthquakes. (3) They can be linked to explosive volcanic eruptions or can be triggered by tectonic activity, with the latter being the cause of most earthquakes. ‖
―(1) 地球内部物质不停的运动，会产生一股作用于岩层的巨大力量。(2) 当这股力量积累到一定程度时，可使一些岩层发生弯曲、变形。(3) 一旦岩层承受不了这种变化的时候，就会发生急剧的破裂、错动，引起强烈振动，这种振动就是我们平时所说的地震。‖
Gold, a precious metal, is prized for important characteristics. Gold has a lustrous beauty that is resistant to corrosion. It is suitable for jewelry, coins and ornamental purposes. Gold never needs to be polished, and will remain beautiful forever. A Macedonian coin remains as untarnished today as the day it was minted twenty-three centuries ago. Important characteristics of gold is its usefulness to industry and science. It has been used in hundreds of industrial applications. The most recent use of gold is in astronauts‘ suits. Gold is treasured for its beauty, for it utility.
―虽有佳肴，弗食，不知其旨也；虽有至道，弗学，不知其善也。是故学，然后知不足；教，然后知困。知不足，然后能自反也，知困，然后能自强也。故曰，教学相长也。‖（《礼记 学记》）
Even when there is good food, you will not know its deliciousness, if you do not taste it; even when there is a good doctrine, you will not know its virtue, if you do not learn it. Therefore, to learn makes us realize our deficiency, and to teach makes us know the difficulties. Having realized our deficiency, we may then come to reflect; having known the difficulties, we may be able to strengthen ourselves to overcome them. So, we say, to teach is to learn.
（钱歌川，《翻译的技巧》，商务印书馆，1981）
There is nothing more disappointing to a hostess who has gone to a lot of trouble or expense than to have her guest so interested in talking politics or business with her husband that he fails to notice the flavor of the coffee, the lightness of the cake, or the attractiveness of the house, which may be her chief interest and pride.
Unit 01 Language
Commonly used words and expression for cohesion and conjunctions
time & sequence: after, before, first, second, then, next, finally, later, meanwhile, in the past; space & location: here, there, nearby, under, below, in front of, in the middle of, at the back of;
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MBA商务英语课堂讲义
addition & attachment: and, also, again, in addition, besides, furthermore, moreover, what is more;
differences & similarities: however, nevertheless, but, although, yet, while, on the contrary, in spite of, instead, but, unlike, similarly, likewise, in the same way, like;
Reasons & Results: since, because, as, result from, due to, thanks to, for this reason, therefore, consequently, accordingly, thus;
specialization: for example, for instance, such as, namely, in other words, that is to say; conclusion: in conclusion, to sum up, in short, in a word, in brief, on the whole.
Unit 02 Culture
欧洲商务礼仪
Nobody actually wants to cause offence but, as business becomes ever more international, it is increasingly easy to get it wrong. There may be a single European market but it does not mean that managers behave the same in Greece as they do in Denmark.
In many European countries handshaking is an automatic gesture. In France good manners require that on arriving at a business meeting a manager shakes hands with every one present. This can be a demanding task and, in a crowded room, may require gymnastic ability if the farthest hand is to be reached.
In Europe the most common challenge is not the content of the food, but the way you behave as you eat. Some things are just not done. In France it is not good manners to raise tricky questions of business over the main course. Business has its place: after the cheese course. Unless you are prepared to eat in silence you have to talk about something – something, that is, other than the business deal which you are continually chewing over in your head.
Italians give similar importance to the whole process of business entertaining. In fact, in Italy the biggest fear, as course after course appears, is that you entirely forget you are there on business. If you have the energy, you can always do the polite thing when the meal finally ends, and offer to pay. Then, after a lively discussion, you must remember the next polite thing to do – let your host pick up the bill.
In Germany, as you walk sadly back to your hotel room, you many wonder why your apparently friendly hosts have not invited you out for the evening. Don‘t worry, it is probably nothing personal. Germans do not entertain business people with quite the same enthusiasm as some of their European counterparts.
These cultural challenges exist side by side with the problems of doing business in a foreign language. Language, of course, is full of difficulties – disaster may be only a syllable away. But the more you know of the culture of the country you are dealing with, the less likely you are to get into difficulties. It is worth the effort. It might be rather hard to explain that the reason you lost the contract was not the product or the price, but the fact that you offended your hosts in a light-hearted comment over an aperitif. Good manners are admired: they can also make or break the deal.
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MBA商务英语课堂讲义
Typical Actions to Unfamiliar Cultures
Ethnocentrism: Assumptions of Superiority Most culture assumes their own values and practices are superior to those of the rest of the world. English-speaking cultures encode this assumption of superiority by using words such as backward and primitive, when actually those evaluations are one cultural view, seen through specific cultural windows, not as an absolute assessment. For this reason, ethnocentrism can lead to complacency.
Projected Cognitive Similarity: Assumptions of Universality This means to assume you know how someone else is thinking based on how you see things. It occurs when you think you know someone else‘s perceptions, judgments, attitudes, and values because you assume they are like your own. This can lead to disrupted communication and even conflict.
A Japanese employee in Tokyo whose report is not ready by the deadline goes to his superior and explains that problems at home with his wife have driven him to drinking more than he should and going home very late after the employee‘s evenings out. The result is a raging hangover that makes him unable to concentrate on writing the report. For the Japanese worker, neither the excessive drinking nor the domestic problem is a source of shame, and his expectation is that the superior‘s attitude will be acceptance and a paternalistic concern for the employee‘s plight. The superior‘s behavior is probably to counsel the employee and to inquire into the domestic situation in subsequent weeks.
When this scenario is presented to businesspeople in the United States, they typically say that an employee who explained that he had failed to complete a report because of a hangover from excessive drinking (whether or not it was to escape domestic problems) would probably incur double condemnation, at least in the mind of the superior. He would be criticized for drinking too much and also for not completing the report on time. Generally speaking, in the United States the superior‘s behaviour would be to tell the employee to get hold of himself and get some help or else expect the unpleasant consequences that follow from failure to perform Two‘s work. The employee in the United States may be no less debilitated by a hangover than his Japanese counterpart, but he will offer some other reason for not being able to get the report done: He may call in saying he‘s ill.
A Chinese male graduate student in the United States lived in a residence hall where he shared a room with an American. Two day his roommate went into the bathroom and completely shaved his head. The Chinese student easily discovered this fact when he himself visited the bathroom and saw the hair everywhere. He returned to his room and said to his roommate, ―You have shaved your head.‖ The American replied, ―Yeah, I did.‖
The Chinese student waited a little, then said, ―I discovered you‘d shaved your head when I went into the bathroom and saw the hair.‖ ―Yeah,‖ the American confirmed. The Chinese was at a loss. He believed he had communicated in the strongest possible language his wish that the American would clean up the mess he‘d made in the bathroom. But no such meaning was attributed to his words by his roommate. Later he discussed the surprising episode with his Chinese friends who told him, ―Listen, with Americans you actually have to
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MBA商务英语课堂讲义
say ?Cleanup the bathroom‘!‖ The Chinese student believed his message had been very clear. He was relying on the context of the communication for the message to be understood: Hair was recently and widely scattered all over the bathroom, and his roommate now had now had no hair.
Low Context vs High Context
A female neurologist from Beijing was working on a research project in a Toronto hospital. She shared a small office with a young Canadian male from a large family, who loved peanut butter. He was so fond of peanut butter, he kept a jar in the office. One day he came into the office and exclaimed, ―Who took my peanut butter?‖ (This was not clearly encoded even though his Canadian culture is lower-context than higher-context. He really meant, ―Where is my peanut butter? I can not find it.‖) But the Chinese woman immediately felt accused. After all, there were only two of them in the office.
She was deeply distressed, but true to her learned cultural behaviour of never showing anger in public, she said nothing. Later that day she was working in a room where a physiotherapist was treating a patient who suffered paralysis of his legs and arms from a motorcycle accident. The physiotherapist moved one of the patient‘s legs in a way that caused him pain.
―Ouch!‖ he cried.
―Oh, I didn‘t do that,‖ said the physiotherapist. ―It was that doctor over there,‖ and she pointed to the Chinese woman.
―How could she have done it since she‘s on the other side of the room?‖ the patient pointed out.
―Ah, she has three hands.‖ The physiotherapist replied.
At these words the Chinese doctor became even more upset. She was so disturbed she behaved in a way uncharacteristic of her culture. She waited until the patient had gone, and then said to the physiotherapist, ―I‘m very upset by what you said.‖ The physiotherapist was taken aback. What had she said? ―You said I had three hands,‖ the doctor finally choked. ―You think I took the peanut butter.‖
What was going on in this exchange? The physiotherapist was making a joke that operated on two levels when she said the doctor had ―three hands.‖ She wasn‘t serious, of course, and expected the patient to be amused at her fanciful explanation for his pain: that the doctor on the other side of the room could have reached an imaginary third hand out to touch him. The Chinese came from a culture where the question ―Who did this?‖ means someone is to blame. Her culture furthermore prohibits direct accusation unless a person has been targeted for shame. Shame is a terrible ordeal since it means punishment for not being a cooperative member of the group. And finally, in Chinese a ―three-handed person‖ is slang for thief. The physiotherapist didn‘t know that, nor did she know anything about a missing jar of peanut butter. But because the Chinese woman spoke out loud and put her distress into words, the whole episode was resolved. The therapist explained to the doctor that she only said ―three hands‖ because it was so obvious the doctor was not responsible for causing the pain to the patient.
Read the following sentences carefully, decide what is wrong with them and think
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MBA商务英语课堂讲义
about the effect that such errors could have if they happened in a real business situation.
1. We shall try out the questionnaires first on our guests to see if we can improve on them.
2. Your question annoys us since all guests including you were given an information booklet in which all such matters are clearly dealt with. Had you read it you would not be making complaints. (write to a customer).
Level of Speech
A young lady home from school was explaining. ―take an egg,‖ she said, ―and make a perforation in the base and a corresponding one in the apex, then apply the lips to the aperture, and by forcibly inhaling the breath, the shell is entirely discharged of its contents.‖
An old day who was listening exclaimed: ―It beats all how folks do things nowadays. When I was a gal, they made a hole in each end and sucked‖
The English Character
No Englishman believes in working from book learning. He suspects all theories, philosophical(哲学理论) or other. He suspects everything new,and dislikes it, unless he can be compelled by the force of circumstances to see that this new thing has advantage over the old. Race-experience is what he invariably depends upon, whenever he can, whether in India, in Egypt, or in Australia. His statesmen do not consult historical precedents（先例） in order to decide what to do : they first learn the facts as they are; then they depend upon their own common sense, not at all upon their university learning or upon philosophical theories. And in the case of the English nation, it must be acknowledges that this instinctive method has been extremely successful.
The last people from whom praise can be expected, even for what is worthy of all praise, are the English. A new friendship, a new ideal, a reform, a noble action, a wonderful poet, an exquisite(精致的) painting—any of these things will be admired and praised by every other people in Europe long before you can get Englishmen to praise. The Englishman all this time is studying, considering, trying to find fault. Why should he try to find fault? So that he will not make any mistakes at a later day. He has inherited(继承) the terrible caution(谨慎) of his ancestors in regard to mistakes. It must be granted that his caution has saved him from a number of very serious mistakes that other nations have made. It must also be acknowledged that he exercises a fair amount of moderation(适度) in the opposite direction—this modern Englishman; he has learned caution of another kind, which his ancestors taught him. ―Power should be used with moderation(适度), for whoever finds himself among valiant(勇敢的) men will discover that no man is superior to others.‖ And this is a very important thing for the strong man to know—that however strong, he cannot be the strongest; his match will be found when occasion demands it. Not only Scandinavian(斯堪的纳维亚的) but English rulers have often discovered this fact to their cost.
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