The live hour
Second Languages and the Hour You Have
On most international calls at least one party is working in a second language at the hardest end of their day, which changes what the call can be used for.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Our engineering office, Auckland
Working 08:00 to 17:00
The client's technical department, Lisbon
Working 08:00 to 17:00 their time, which is 19:00 to 04:00 here
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
Five working days a week in common and not one working hour. Everything on that contract was going to be written down whether anybody planned for it or not.
International teams need more than a time-zone converter, so managers can remote staff performance analytics to connect calendar assumptions with the work completed around them.
For a separate reference on calendars, standards, or international operations, consult International Labour Organization.
Four exchanges, and what the language of them cost
A specification discussed only on calls
9 / 6Three of the nine days were not working days on their side: three calls, each producing a different understanding. Everybody on the calls was working in a second language
The same specification written down and circulated
2 / 2Both days of this wait were working days on their side. Read twice by each party, queried once, settled
A commercial point raised at the end of a long call
6 / 4Two of the six days were not working days on their side: the point was not understood and nobody said so. Reopened a fortnight later, from the beginning
The same point put in writing with a question attached
1 / 1The one day of this wait was a working day on their side. Answered the next morning with a precise objection
four waits · 18 calendar days · 13 of them working days on the other side
In both pairs the written version settled the matter in a fraction of the time. Nothing here is about anybody's competence: reading in a second language is substantially easier than following three people talking in it. One team's own job.
On most calls crossing a border, somebody is working in their second language.
Often it is the party at the awkward hour as well, which compounds: listening to a fast conversation in a second language at eleven at night is a different task from reading the same content at ten in the morning.
What is harder about listening
Reading allows re-reading, pausing, and looking something up. None of those is available on a call.
A conversation also runs at the pace of the fastest speaker, usually a native one, and includes the things native speakers do without noticing: idiom, abbreviation, humour, trailing off, talking over each other, and asking questions that are really statements.
The result is predictable. The party in their second language follows perhaps most of it, does not interrupt to say which parts they missed, and leaves with a different understanding from everybody else.
Why nobody says so
Asking somebody to repeat themselves costs something, and the cost is higher in a commercial relationship where competence is being assessed.
A supplier who says "I did not follow that" on a customer call is making a statement about themselves in front of people who decide whether to place the next order. Most people will take the risk of having understood wrongly over the certainty of appearing not to have understood.
This is not a character flaw and it cannot be fixed by saying "do ask if anything is unclear", which transfers the cost back to the person least able to pay it.
What helps
Write it first. Circulate the substance in advance. The party in their second language arrives having read it, which converts the call from comprehension into discussion.
Write it after. A short written summary lets everybody check their understanding privately. This is where most of the divergence gets caught.
Slow down and drop the idiom. Not simplified language, which is patronising and usually unnecessary — the vocabulary is rarely the problem. Speed, overlapping speech and idiom are.
Ask specific questions rather than general ones. "Any questions?" produces nothing. "What will you do first on Monday?" produces an answer from which any misunderstanding is immediately visible.
The last ten minutes
The commercial point raised at the end of a long call is the single most common place for this to go wrong.
By then everybody is tired, the party in their second language most of all, and the item is raised quickly because the hour is nearly up. It is heard, not followed, and not queried.
Anything of consequence should be raised in the first ten minutes or put in writing afterwards. The end of a call is for confirming what was agreed, not for introducing something new.
Where writing wins outright
| Content | Live | Written |
|---|---|---|
| Specifications and numbers | Error-prone | Reliable |
| Dates and quantities | Mishearable | Exact |
| Disagreement about a position | Faster live | Slower, and hardens |
| Explaining something complicated | Hard in a second language | Re-readable |
| Repairing a relationship | Much better live | Poor |
Two rows favour the call and three favour the page, which is roughly the right proportion: the live hour is for the things where tone and immediacy carry the content, and everything factual belongs in writing in any case.
Interpreters
Where one is used, two practical points.
Allow double the time, and say so when booking, because consecutive interpretation is slower than everybody expects and a call compressed into the original hour becomes a summary.
And send the material in advance to the interpreter as well as to the participants. An interpreter who has seen the drawing and the terms beforehand will render a technical discussion accurately; one who has not will do their best with vocabulary they are meeting for the first time, at speed, with nobody able to tell that something has been lost.
Writing for somebody reading in a second language
Three habits, none of which involves simplifying the content.
Short sentences with one idea each. Not short words — technical vocabulary is usually the easiest part — but short sentences, because the subordinate clauses are what make a paragraph hard to parse.
Numbers and dates set out rather than embedded. A table of four figures is read correctly by everybody; the same four figures inside a sentence are not.
And the request at the top rather than at the end. A message whose point arrives in the final paragraph requires the whole thing to be held in mind while reading, which is substantially more work in a second language than in a first.
All three also make the message better for native readers, which is the usual way with this kind of thing.