Hispanic Enterprise - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 10) BRIEFCASE X-ECUTIVE CALENDAR: WHAT NOT TO MISS December 18: Showcase 2007, Northwest Minority Business Council, Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, Washington. For more information call 206-575-7748 or see www.nmbc.biz January 11: Franchise Expo South, Miami Beach Convention Center, Miami Beach. For more information call 201-226-1130 or see www.mfvexpo.com January 26-27: National Franchise & Business Opportunities Expo, International Exposition Center, One I-X Center Drive, Cleveland. For more information call 905-477-2677 or 1-800891-4859 February 9-12: International Franchise Association’s 48th Annual Convention,“Building the Future Together,” Marriott World Center, Orlando. For more information, contact Lynette Darby at 202-662-0782 or see www.franchise.org March 4-5: 11th Annual LULAC Legislative Awards Gala & Policy Summit, J.W. Marriott Hotel, 1331 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington D.C., For more information call 202-833-6130 or see www.lulac.org April 10-12: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademarks showcase, Main Office, Alexandria, VA. See www.uspto.gov/surveys/tmexpo2008.htm April 11-13: 17th Annual International Franchise Expo, Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. For more information, call 201-226-1130 or visit www.ifeinfo.com April 23-25: DiversityBusiness.com’s 8th Annual National Multicultural Business Conference, Disney Broadwalk Resorts, Orlando. For information contact Bill Stokes at 203-255-2972 or see www.DiversityBusiness.com . QUIPS & QUOTES: WHAT THEY ARE SAYING “A client will often prefer to do business with a smaller company since it offers better attention to the client than a big company does.” —Maria Contreras-Sweet, Founder/Chairwoman, Promerica Bank, as quoted in La Opinión “We have an obligation to pay attention to the growing sophistication of Latino consumer—their greater mix of language ability and preference, their broader media exposure, external forces such as the immigration debate—all of which are fueling how we are defined.” —Carl Kravetz, Past-Chairman, Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies at AHAA 21st Conference “There are times when it makes good business sense to give up on extremely high-maintenance customers who are a drain on resources.” —Terrie Piell, columnist, writing in BusinessWeek “Improving our trade relations with Latin America can open the door to an incredible potential for economic power and growth for both small business owners in the United States and for the U.S. economy as a whole.” —Michael L. Barrera, CEO and President, United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, as quoted on ushcc.com “Consumers are growing more pessimistic about the short-term future, and their rather pessimistic outlook suggests a year’s end that is not exactly stellar.” —Lynn Franco, Director, Consumer Research Center, The Conference Board, as quoted in La Opinión LANGUAGE TRAINING GIFT OF TONGUES Love it or hate it, globalization is here to stay. For multinational corporations, the question is how to survive and come out a winner. One absolute necessity is having executives as fluent in the languages of the countries where they are posted as they are in the language of their home office. And that, as Brenda Arbelaez of the language instruction service Pals International learned when she was teaching in bilingual schools back in her native Bogotá, is as much about understanding the culture as translating the words. After coming to the U.S. in 1975 as a Spanish-as-a-secondlanguage teacher, she spied a future for herself on the corporate scene and was soon teaching executives assigned to Spanishspeaking countries. Her foot was in the door of globalization, and in 1983 she founded Pals International (www.palsintl.com) as a linguistic passport for executives being posted anywhere in the world. Today her most requested languages are Spanish, French, German, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Russian and Portuguese, with still more available if required. Multinationals counting on Pal International include Chrysler, General Motors and the Robert Bosch Corporation. And as Arbalaez understood from day one, there’s a lot more to language than translation. So besides language instruction, Pals International also offers cross-cultural training programs, accent reduction, global relocation support services, business consulting, language translation and interpretation. HISPANIC ENTERPRISE 10 December/January 2008 http://www.nmbc.biz http://www.lulac.org http://www.mfvexpo.com http://www.uspto.gov/surveys/tmexpo2008.htm http://www.ifeinfo.com http://www.franchise.org http://www.DiversityBusiness.com http://www.palsintl.com http://ushcc.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.