Where did you learn japanese?

sargos7 said:


If you're talking about doing business in China, and you actually have to have direct contact with your business partners, chances are you're a board member of a large corporation... in which case, you'll have translators on your payroll... Unless you mean actually living in China, running a tea shop or something...

There's a reason why being a translator is a job. Business people go to business school to learn how to run a business. That takes a lot of time and money. And once they start their career, they never have free time. It would be irresponsible for a business person to not hire a translator, if they are doing business with another country that speaks another language.

Miyata- said:
you seem to have the most simplistic idea of business

sargos7 said:


Are you looking at this as a supply and demand problem? High demand and low supply for bilingual businessmen means they get paid more? The supply and demand view is the simple view... simple enough that they teach it in elementary school...

There's a lot more than just how badly they want to do business with you. Typically, the only time you have customers crawling all over you anyway is when you either aren't turning a profit, or more likely when you're losing money.

Perhaps the Chinese companies would prefer to do business with people who speak their language. But why? Perhaps it's just part of their culture, and it makes them more comfortable, in which case it's not likely to be a deal breaker. But the more time you spend on learning Chinese, the less time you spend learning how to do business. In other words, you are more likely to be inexperienced and easy to manipulate. That's profitable for them, not you.

Miyata- said:
you seem to have the most simplistic idea of business

Miyata- said:
There is not much to gain from learning japanese other than lack of needing subs.

Learning either Mandarin or Cantonese would be incredibly useful in life, albeit japanese is easier to learn OP. Classes/online classes is your best bet at learning it.

Miyata- said:
I believe you took some time out to go out of your way to answer my post even though I said I wouldn't go into it further, I atleast owe you a reply.

It is clear to me and anyone with some business sense that you have a major lack of knowledge when it comes to business. Which is completely fine as long as business isn't your profession that I assume.

And just to be clear I wasn't looking at this from a simple supply and demand level you basically clarified my last post which funnily enough you quoted.

Miyata- said:
There is not much to gain from learning japanese other than lack of needing subs.

sargos7 said:

You can actually make that work fairly well, as long as you stick to extremely proper grammar, spell everything perfectly, avoid all contractions, abbreviations, acronyms, slang, passive voice, idioms, metaphors, etc. and split everything into multiple simple sentences, rather than having one long complex one. A good way to tell if it's being translated correctly or not is to copy the output and translate that back, and see how much it changes it.

sargos7 said:


No need to be so condescending. If you must know, I'm an IT major, and I make no claims to be a business expert. But please, if what I said is really as wrong as you claim it is, why don't you explain why, rather than just continuing to repeat yourself. I like to learn.

Miyata- said:


Unfortunately for you I am not here to teach. Try a part time business course if you are that interested to learn.

sargos7 said:


Unfortunately for you, there's this thing called research... which I just did... way to use a quote from a random unknown blog post on yahoo voices, as if it's some sort of credible authoritative voice on the matter. All of a sudden, I'm taking you a lot less seriously.

Miyata- said:
and you really expected me to get my old books out to quote you?

sargos7 said:

Not at all... especially since the first Google result for the search terms mandarin and business brings up a credible source that you could have quoted.

"In much the same way that the dollar remains the preferred currency, English will remain the preferred language for the foreseeable future,"
"Speaking the language confers a huge advantage for anyone who wants to do business in a non-English-speaking country"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-30/mandarin-chinese-most-useful-business-language-after-english-1-.html

I'm gonna go ahead and assume that random blog post was actually yours, because there's no way you found that with a random search, especially that quickly. If that's the case, you should probably take yourself a lot less seriously too. You're confusing your own personal opinions with common sense. Just because you study something, that doesn't make you an expert.

And you also don't have to pay for classes to be allowed to do research on your own. So no, I will not stick to my major. I learn about that in class. I'll research whatever I want to in my free time.

Miyata- said:
Did you not even read the link you posted?

"Mandarin, China’s official tongue, is also the top language worldwide for business other than English, according to Bloomberg Rankings.

Mandarin, spoken by 845 million people, scored highest in a ranking of languages, excluding English, based on business usefulness. The ranking scored languages according to the number of speakers, number of countries where the language is official, along with those nations’ populations, financial power, educational and literacy rates, and related measures."

If this doesn't tell you mandarin would be beneficial and helpful in a business sense then I really can't help you and I'm afraid no amounts of selfstudy can.

Miyata- said:
There is not much to gain from learning japanese other than lack of needing subs.

Learning either Mandarin or Cantonese would be incredibly useful in life, albeit japanese is easier to learn OP. Classes/online classes is your best bet at learning it.