The Cultural Adaptation and Translation Process

	Job Titles The most difficult aspect of handling business cards is often the translation of the job position. That's because job titles do not always translate directly. For example, the position of "president" can have a variety of forms, depending on whether the person is "president of a company", "president of a university", "president of a country" or even "president of a club". Furthermore, many jobs that exist in the West are virtually unheard of overseas and the trend in N. America to use euphemistic terms for mundane positions also adds to the confusion. Therefore, it is sometimes helpful to include a short description of your job in parenthesis right below the job title itself. We'll let you know if we think that such a description would be helpful in your situation.
	Address Order Addresses in the US and Canada begin with the street address, followed by the city, state, zip/postal code and country. However, in Asia, the address begins with the country, and goes consecutively by province/prefecture/state, city, street address - and finally postal code. Don't worry, though. We'll adapt your card correctly.
	Proper Names In order to avoid confusion, we always transliterate proper names phonetically. This means that if your last name is "Green", we will transliterate it so that your counterpart will pronounce it something akin to the way you say it, not the local word for the color green. We follow the same rule for names of companies and institutions.
	Telephone and Fax Numbers We'll add the international country code to the front of your number on the Asian-language side in order to avoid frustrations later when your counterpart tries to reach you by phone or fax.
	Miscellaneous Issues We're not trying to scare you, but from time to time, we come across a card that could really cause embarrassment - or excessive hilarity. For example, Asians only write the names of the dead in red ink. So, you should certainly not carry a business card where your name is written in red. Also, the number "4" is unlucky in the Orient because the pronunciation of the Chinese word for "4" also happens to mean "death". We'll discuss your options if your address is "444 Forty-Fourth Street". Otherwise, just rest assured that we'll keep an eye out for such problems.