Business Speaker In Translation
As a business speaker expanding audiences, I’m now watching Cantonese Chinese language TV on weekends and some videos during the week in order to improve my own skills in this extremely difficult language. I intend to be able to translate my motivational speech into Chinese in the future.
It’s weird but Cantonese, the main Chinese language dialect of southern China, Hong Kong and surrounding areas, was my very first language. However, being born and growing up in Canada in mainly non-ethnic neighbourhoods, English quickly replaced Cantonese as my primary language. As the years went by, I used less and less Cantonese, even while speaking to family at home.
Now, I am maybe 65% fluent in spoken Cantonese so I have definitely lost a lot of the language skills. But I do intend to get these skills back enough to be able to do my entire motivational speech in Cantonese so I could perform it to audiences that want to hear it in this language. I expect that some audiences in major Chinese neighbourhoods in cities here in North America and Hong Kong might fit into this category. Of course, I’ll need some coaching from fluent speakers to help me.
Business Speaker Preparing For Asia
After Cantonese, I will tackle Mandarin, the most predominant Chinese language of all. With Mandarin skills, I will be able to hit the huge market in China as a business speaker there. Although Mandarin probably has more potential than Cantonese due to the sheer size of the population that speaks the main language, Cantonese would be a much faster translation for me since I already understand basic street Cantonese.
I don’t understand a word of Mandarin as it is as foreign to me as it would be for non-Chinese. However, I heard that it is somewhat easier to learn compared to Cantonese.
I would like to be able to offer my motivational speeches in English, Cantonese and Mandarin in order to be able to function as a business speaker in the massive Asian market. English would be the language I could use for motivational speeches in countries like Malaysia, Singapore and also Hong Kong too since it’s the main business language.
