Learning and team building meet online in Perfect Word & Xpert teambuilding collaboration

Xpert teambuilding, the innovative Munich-based team building and events company, and Perfect Word Language Services joined forces in December to provide a combined emailing skills and team building event for one of Germany’s largest companies.

One of Germany’s most renowned global companies approached us to improve the communication and build team cohesion within and between departments. They were intrigued by the unique blend of game-based training and team collaboration offered by our English Email Challenge.

After discussing their needs with the departmental heads, we decided to adapt our standard emailing skills event to meet their specific interdepartmental requirements. Prior to the event, each of the thirty participants received our tailored Emailing Guide, which is a list of the phrases they will often need in their role at the company. This e-booklet is customized in close collaboration with the company to ensure that the resulting communication not only uses the correct terminology, but also reflects the professional image and customer-orientation they would like their employees to project. All the participants need for the email challenge is a smartphone and a laptop / desktop PC. The participants download the Xpert Events app to the smartphone and receive a link to join the event.

We met online in our dedicated online conferencing area, where the event kicked off with a tailored presentation about communicating in English via email, which included communication basics, politeness, formal/informal communication and business email conventions, etc. This set the tone for the game, in which teams of 4-6 employees competed against each other by collaborating to complete a range of tasks in the event app. The game itself was also customized to support the objectives of the client. The collaboration on solving tasks also provided a strong team building effect.

The participants scored points through participation and correct answers. At the end, the team with the most points was crowned as the winners. However, all participants benefited greatly from the event and the feedback was positive.

This combination of team building and learning is intensive, but fun. It provides a real push for the emailing skills of the participants through the presentation and the emailing guide, promotes the use of correct phrases and brings confidence into their email communication.

The event provides the skills the employees need to optimize their emails and then gives them the opportunity to use the phrases in a setting which is fun, collaborative and competitive. It also builds team cohesion and improves cooperation through active collaboration during the game.

Communication, cohesion, cooperation – as organizations struggle with new working models and distributed teams, companies are looking for ways to improve collaboration.

With our English Email Challenge, we have found a way to cover these aspects in a single, fun event which brings immediate benefits in the daily work.

Talking Room: Die perfekte Möglichkeit, die englische Sprache in einem geschützten Umfeld zu üben.

Das neue Talking Room-Konzept von Perfect Word ermöglicht Unternehmen, Mitarbeitern, die nicht gerade an einem Englischkurs teilnehmen, die Möglichkeit zu bieten, ihre Englischkenntnisse gelegentlich zu üben.

Talking Room wurde für Personen entwickelt, die das Gefühl haben, dass sie nur eine Gelegenheit brauchen, regelmäßig Englisch sprechen zu können. Vielleicht nehmen sie bereits an einer Englischstunde teil und haben das Bedürfnis nach etwas mehr Übung oder möchten einfach nur verhindern, dass sich der Rost ansetzt. Wir alle wissen, wie schwierig es sein kann, wochenlang kein Englisch zu sprechen, und dann plötzlich an einem Treffen oder Projekt, bei dem die englische Sprache eine unumgängliche Voraussetzung darstellt, teilnehmen zu müssen.

Um unseren Firmen-Kunden bei der Bewältigung dieser Herausforderung zu helfen, habe ich beschlossen, ein brandneues Perfect Word-Konzept einzuführen - den Talking Room. Der Talking Room ist ein strukturierter Diskussionsraum, der allen Mitarbeitern eines Unternehmens die Möglichkeit bietet, an einer Gruppendiskussion über ein geplantes Geschäftsthema, zum Beispiel "Customer Service" oder "Marketing", teilzunehmen.

Bis zu 10 Teilnehmer können sich im Voraus für die Online-Sitzung anmelden, solange noch freie Plätze verfügbar sind. Die Teilnehmer erhalten vor der Sitzung eine Liste mit nützlichen Vokabeln für die Diskussion und einen Link zu der 60-minütigen Sitzung auf Teams, Zoom oder einer anderen Plattform Ihrer Wahl.

Die Sitzung beginnt damit, dass der Moderator eine Begrüßungsrunde leitet, bevor Fragen zur Wortliste geklärt werden. Der Moderator stellt dann jeden der Diskussionspunkte vor und erlaubt den Teilnehmern, das Thema zu diskutieren, während er unaufdringlich Korrekturen in der Chat-Funktion der Plattform vornimmt. Die Sitzung wird mit einem kurzen Vokabelquiz abgeschlossen, das auf der während der Sitzung verwendeten Sprache basiert. Ziel ist es, die Sprechzeit des Lehrers zu minimieren und den Teilnehmern so viel Zeit wie möglich zu geben, ihr Englisch zu üben.

Der Kursorganisator kann aus 25 bestehenden Talking Room-Themen pro Sitzung ein Thema auswählen oder gegen eine zusätzliche Gebühr eigene, spezialisierte, firmenspezifische Themen auswählen. Praktisch jedes Thema ist möglich.

Als Sonderangebot zum Start des Dienstes haben Kunden jetzt die Möglichkeit, 3 Sitzungen zum Preis von 2 zu buchen. Alternativ kann auch ein Block von 10 oder 20 Sitzungen mit einem Rabatt von 10% gebucht werden. Diese Sonderkonditionen gelten bis Ende November 2020.

Um mehr über den neuen Service oder die Einrichtung eines Talking Rooms bei Ihren Unternehmen zu erfahren, folgen Sie bitte diesem Link zu unserer Website.

Getting Smart with Machine Translations

Machine translation is increasingly employed at companies for internal communication and to help employees understand incoming messages and documents. Using machine translation services such as Deepl can save time and money, but the texts they generate are not accurate enough in terms of intended meaning or emotional impact for marketing purposes or other critical communication. While a full translation will still give you the best results, having your machine-translated texts checked by an expert is relatively inexpensive and makes a world of difference.

For potential customers your website, blog posts, user manuals and marketing campaign messages provide an insight into the heart and soul of your company. Make sure that these texts are aligned with your mission and meet your own high standards.

I have had the pleasure of editing and translating well over a thousand documents for around 50 companies, from renowned multinational corporations to local service providers in a wide range of sectors, including automotive, IT, engineering, insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

At the end of last year, I launched my Deepl plus Editing service, which has grown in popularity as Deepl has been adopted by more companies and communication issues have arisen. I deal with these issues on a daily basis. Apart from choosing incorrect vocabulary for the context, one of areas where machine-translated texts perform poorly is when using words that imply a negative or positive attitude towards a topic. Another is setting the level of emotion that should be conveyed. For instance, in English we don’t “incur” something positive. While “repercussion” and “impact” may carry the same basic meaning, one is always negative while the other is not necessarily. Such connotations are embedded in the meaning of the word. The tendency with machine-translated texts is to revert to the more neutral option. This leaves texts sounding dry and emotionless, exactly what you are trying to avoid in your marketing communication.

So the job of editing machine-translated texts is not simply to search for obvious errors, but also to bring the message to life by adding color and shades of meaning. As machine translation becomes more pervasive, this is sure to becoming a point of differentiation between companies and the reason why some succeed in reaching their target audiences, while others fall short.

What a company needs, is a long-lasting relationship with an experienced, trusted editor who takes time to get to know the company’s culture and objectives. If you are interested in finding out how this could work for your company, please get in touch with me.

Dear QM, is your English a Störfall?

Are you about to face your first audit in the English language? Is your English conformant or your vocabulary no longer compliant? Could every English meeting become a serious incident? Will your language skills stand up to close inspection? Is recalibration required?

Every quality manager dealing with ISO 9001 knows that Opportunities for Improvement (OFIs) are suggestions made by the auditor, which may or may not be implemented by the quality manager. Continuous improvement is an essential goal for your company. So why not take this opportunity to get your English skills up to standard?

A refresher course in Business English, focused specifically on the language of quality management, could help you to overcome your insecurities and help you to feel prepared for the high pressure that an audit invariably entails. Broken up into 3 ninety-minute face-to-face sessions, backed up with 3 online units, Perfect Word’s English for Quality Managers is a short course filled with useful phrases and vocabulary. With over 10 years experience working as a quality manager for a language institute, your trainer, Martin Epstein, is well qualified to prepare you for your upcoming audit with practical tips and realistic role-play exercises.

The three online sessions ensure maximum learning while keeping the costs low. Available for groups as well as individual learners. For a full offer, please click here.

Words of the year 2016

According to their very own website, which I suspect we can believe, Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016 is “post-truth” - which tells you quite a lot about the beating honesty took over the year (or not). 

The frequency of the word sky-rocketed towards the end of the year as the American presidential election started to drift away into “alternative facts” (surely a candidate for word of the year 2017), fake news (another), fact-checking, outrage and suspicion. 

Other words on their shortlist which reflect the times in which we live are “alt-right” (a political conservative movement, not a music genre), “chatbot” (which is a computer program designed to converse with humans) and “Brexiteer” (which sounds like a British musketeer - the truth is, I fear, rather more mundane). Another interesting entry is “adulting”, which means “the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult”. We now need a word for that!

Merriam-Webster, on the other hand, chose “surreal” as their word for 2016, for which searches rose dramatically after various surprises and tragedies over the past year. The word gained traction after the overthrow attempt in Turkey, the Brexit vote and the American election. 
Other popular words listed by the American dictionary include revenant, icon, and bigly. “Revenant”, meaning “one who returns from the death”, was driven by the DiCaprio film of the same name, while the upsurge in “icon” was triggered by the death of Prince (or Symbol or the Artist Previously known as Prince, etc). He is now the icon previously known as Symbol, which is all very graphic.

“Bigly” is a bit of a red herring. It became popular after many people thought U.S. President-elect Donald Trump used the word during a presidential debate. This prompted furious debate about whether the word actually existed and whether Trump had, in fact, used it. Many language experts agreed that Trump had probably said “big league”, but that “bigly” actually does exist (although it is very seldom, if ever, used). Please don’t use it. It’s “so sad”, another phrase which Donald Trump has gifted to late-night talk-show hosts. 

Dictionary.com  has chosen “xenophobia” as its Word of the Year, meaning “fear or hatred of foreigners”. Put it together with “Brexit”, events in the USA and local elections throughout Europe and a picture starts to emerge which is, to use a popular phrase, “so sad” indeed.