I was recently transferred to an international company that has branches all over the world.
My job was to coordinate the communication between the various departments. Since the company was so global, the majority of my colleagues were foreign.
At first, I was excited about the prospect of working with people from different cultures, but I soon realized that it would be a challenge for me. The biggest problem was that I could not understand their emails.
The language barrier was a major issue for me. Most of my colleagues spoke English as their second language and their emails were not only filled with “complex language” but also with words and phrases I had never heard before.
I tried my best to decipher their emails, but I often had difficulty understanding them. I was afraid to ask my colleagues for clarification, as I felt like I was being rude. I was also worried that I would come across as ignorant if I asked too many questions.
At first, I thought that I could simply try to guess the meaning of their emails. But this did not work, as I often ended up misunderstanding the messages. I also realized that I had a limited amount of time to respond to the emails, so I had to find a solution quickly but to no avail.
Sometimes their English is so bad I tell them to write to me in Chinese so I can at least understand the meaning they try to get across.
But sometimes the technical terms has completely different meaning and I was really struggling.
I left my job soon after, cause I could not understand their “很够力” (Hen gou li) email.