Mandarin Chinese for business people?

March 8, 2011 8:41 AM

Looking to pick up Mandarin for business people, aka with a heavy dose of how to do corporate speak.

I'm Chinese, and my Mandarin is good enough for regular communication - my accent can pass for native, my vocab stumbles a little at times but I pick it up pretty quickly when I'm in the environment, I can read most novels though it takes some effort, and I can type (though not write).

I'm working with a company that is taking on a client with a lot of work in China, and it would be a fantastic asset for me to really polish up my Mandarin so I can help act as a go-between and maybe help out with the translation. However, thinking about how I would say things like "action items" or "going forward" or any of the typical corporate lingo is giving me all sorts of anxiety.

Are there tapes or books that focus explicitly on business-speak or getting around in a business environment? I don't mind if it's a little simplistic, anything will do. Thanks in advance!

posted by Phire to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

I don't have any recs for independent study on your own, but do you have any business or engineering schools nearby (within a larger university)? They often have technical communication courses that would fit your needs. Our university seems to focus a lot on Japanese, but you could at least poke around and check in with some of the professors to see what they'd recommend.

Sometimes, places like this will offer courses to members of the public, or at least make it more accessible to working professionals with summer workshops, etc. You might even be able to convince them that there's a need for this sort of thing.

Also, you might even try some conversation time with a Chinese student in one of those fields. I'll bet you could set this up remotely, too, particularly if the student is also looking to practice his or her English as well.

Good luck!
posted by Madamina at 9:00 AM on March 8, 2011

I agree with Madamina: often times larger universities will allow members of the public to audit classes? Amazon reveals a whole bunch of books, but I'm definitely not qualified to recommend any, not having used them.

And quick tangential question: what exactly does "I can type (though not write)" mean? I don't mean to be snarky -- I'm just curious as a linguist/heritage Mandarin speaker. Does that mean you have very good passive character recognition but when it comes to actually writing by hand, it's very poor active memory? An extreme version of tibiwangzi, in other words? (i don't mean to derail the thread -- I am actually just quite curious!)
posted by andrewesque at 9:13 AM on March 8, 2011

Best answer: Chinese I (Streamlined) from MIT's Online Courseware, and the pursuant courses, might be of interest.

"Course Description: This course, along with 21F.108/158 offered in the spring, form the elementary level of the streamlined sequence, which is for students who have some basic conversational skills gained, typically, from growing up in a Chinese speaking environment, but lack a corresponding level of literacy. The focus of the course is on learning standard everyday usage, on reading in both traditional and simplified characters, and on writing."
posted by IAmBroom at 4:54 PM on March 8, 2011

Response by poster: The Chinese language offerings at the local university look pretty paltry, but I'll give MIT a shot, and failing that I suppose I could practice reading some business memos... (shudder)

Thanks!
posted by Phire at 5:47 PM on March 8, 2011

The great thing (or appalling, depending on your POV) about corporate-speak in the Mainland at the minute (whenever I hear it, which isn't that often I must admit) is that it's peppered with English buzz-words for precisely all that specialist vocab, so I bet you'd be pretty good to go in spoken-language situations as you are.
posted by Abiezer at 9:59 PM on March 8, 2011

Response by poster: Abiezer - thanks! That's a big relief. I plan on bugging some of my Chinese relatives as well to see if they have any tips, fingers crossed I gues.

Andrewesque - I was exhausted when I posted my first reply and completely forgot about your question. As far as I understand with a limited grasp of the technicalities of linguistics, your assumption is correct. I've only had a few years of "proper education" in China peppered with some language classes when I moved away, but I was reading Chinese novels for years before and years after that initial formal training. So while I've had next to no practice actually writing out the characters, I've got a pretty good grasp of pinyin and I'm alright at discerning which of a series of homophones is the appropriate character to use in a particular situation. Of course, input programs having multi-character words in their databases helps me pick out the ambiguous cases. Does that make sense?
posted by Phire at 12:23 AM on March 9, 2011