The cultural wave

I was in Amsterdam the other day, discussing a programme with a financial institution to support their delivery of projects in places like Egypt, The Emirates, Taiwan and Thailand.

Langauge is, of course, an issue. While we can supply local language support in many of these places, we do not have an Arabic presence.

"No problem," I was told, "We'll have them do it in English."

Now I know that the language thing will be a problem - but I am sure that we can find a way through it. The more interesting concern for me, however, is that this conversation must be happening all over the World.

The rules of the global game are set by the developed World. Countries in the developing World must abide by these rules if they want to play - not that they have any choice, really...

The explicit rules are obvious enough - compliance with international standards, working to WTO requirements and so forth: but the implicit rule is - do it in English.

This might be all right if this meant using the language only, but English is not a simply a language: it is a door to the Western (largely American) World.

And any culture that opens that door is engulfed in a Tsunami of Western culture every bit as destructive to the local environment as the real Tsunami was to the buildings and lives of the peoples of Asia.

There's no stopping it. The developing world had better get good at learning to surf.

- Drib