What is Cultural Competency?
Cultural competency is knowing the appropriate words for the occasion, topic, audience, or target group in a given culture under given circumstances.
Cultural competency derives it approach from cognitive psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. A people's interest controls attention and focus, and attention and focus control specialization.
Humans pay close attention to what interests them—their climate and shelter, food sources, symbols of communication, for example. Humans then learn more specialized details about their areas of interest.
So, people who live near the ocean develop large vocabularies for wind and water conditions. People who live in icy and snowy climates similarly develop expansive vocabularies for frozen water. Concepts and grammar reflect how native speakers view reality and their interests.
Necessity dictates most interests, but preferences also play a role. Americans are very interested in sports, games, and guns; many American English metaphors reflect that reality, such as to keep one's eyes on the ball, to jump the gun, or to be right on target.
Almost all cultures use colors, flowers, animals, and many other aspects of reality for symbolic interaction; however, symbolic meaning may change significantly from culture to culture. For example, in the Western world, the color black symbolizes death, and white means innocence. In the Chinese culture, black is the color of heaven, while white stands for gold, bright, and shiny, but also indicates mourning.
Sexual symbolism, rampant in most Western languages, may sound offensive when translated too literally into other languages. Certain theoretical concepts play an important role in some cultures but may sound inappropriate or misplaced in others. For example, Americans value attributes such as "leadership" and "leaders". So did the Germans before the Second World War. Today, however, the German culture discredits the word "leadership" as a positive value due to the word's association with the political leadership during that time. Translating materials that originated in the U.S. into German can become quite problematic in untrained hands.
Abbreviations and acronyms pose problems, too. Consider the acronym for the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party. What people consider funny, sad, friendly, or offensive may differ greatly from culture to culture.
And that's where miscommunication happens.
- General Motors's "Nova" never sold well in Latin America. In Spanish, no va means it won't run.
- QUARK Express software has a space-age connotation to English speakers. However, in German quark is white cheese, and a metaphor for nonsense.
- Pepsodent tried to sell its toothpaste in Southeast Asia with a slogan that emphasized that it whitens teeth. The locals chew betel nut, which blackens teeth. Black teeth are considered beautiful.
- Kellogg renamed its "Bran Buds" in Sweden, where the words roughly mean burned farmer.
- The American Dairy Association's successful "Got milk?" slogan flopped in Mexico, where it translated to "¿Tiene leche?" In English, this slogan translates to "Are you lactating?" - an obvious mistranslation!
In every language, symbolism, metaphors, images and idiomatic speech are often used as short formulae for experiences, emotions, or bits of communication that would otherwise require lengthy explanations. However, these verbal elements frequently do not have a direct translation in other languages.
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