11 ms·
Same word. Different places? Different meanings
- chime 13y agoHow is Derek the co-author for all of those books? Is it like how celebs co-author books or did he really write parts of each book?
- a_bonobo 13y agoFrom the books' description at amazon.com [1]: > Each year we hire 3 researchers (at least one local and one foreigner who live in {country}), a native English-speaking in-country writer, and an editor, to bring you insights from multiple perspectives. So I guess he edits the answers from the researchers (who don't seem to be co-authors, since there's only two authors on the books). [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HMJ72JO http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HMJ72JO
- justhw 13y agoFrom the about page: > How these books were made I wrote 200 questions to be asked of each country. I hired multiple researchers in each country to answer each question. One local, one foreigner, one other. I wanted the book to be more than one person’s point of view. I hired a writer to turn the multiple different answers into one combined answer, and add another layer of expertise. I hired an editor to proofread and improve the final text.`
- codemac 13y agoA long advertisement for a pile of books. Not to mention the article states the obvious - different cultures are.. you know.. different. Am I missing something? Was there anything more to this?
- supersystem 13y agoAsk Noam Chomsky ;) This is largely about the difference between the connotation and denotation of words. http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/connotations.htm http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/connotations.htm
- nl 13y agoI think you cynicism is unnecessary. Knowing different cultures are.. you know.. different is pretty pointless without being able to point to specific examples of just how alien they can be to one another. I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness".
- yongjik 13y ago> I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness". Yeah, me neither, and I'm Korean. * Well, it can be a sound advice to say "when you want to sell a product in Korea, emphasize it's new." But that's just plain old marketing strategy and sounds boring. (When selling books to English users, play on cultural relativism?)
- jrs99 13y agoI also didn't know everyone in japan would think that perfection = quality. That really is a revelation to me. And if you ask everyone in Korea, they'll tell you new = quality. They are kind of related culturally, yet they are radically different. I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because he was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.?
- bitwize 13y agoI also didn't know everyone in japan would think that perfection = quality. Me neither. Japanese aesthetics has a distinct place for rough, imperfect items which are referred to with terms like shibui and wabi-sabi. Such items have flaws, often deliberately introduced, which give them "character" so may in some circumstances be preferred over the "perfect" item.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoConsider that I always buy laptops "refurbished". Dell's definition of a refurbished laptop includes "someone else ordered this, and we built it, but then they canceled the order and we never shipped it". The discount you get for buying one of these, relative to a "new" (different how?) one, is substantial. > I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because he was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.? Occam's razor would suggest that he said that because that's what "quality" means, and the article was written by a blowhard.
- jrs99 13y agoWell, it's not #1 and getting consistently upvoted more than anything else on hacker news at the moment for no reason at all. So it's probably a revelation to most people and very relevant to all programmers. If you go to: http://www.sachitgupta.me/ http://www.sachitgupta.me/ you'll find someone in marketing and generates leads. that's probably coincidental since most people on hacker news are in marketing. I don't think you should be curious why this is #1.
- MattBearman 13y agoIsn't every post on a start up's blog a way to get more customers?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- istorical 13y agoI'm working on something somewhat related: http://www.istorical.com http://www.istorical.com It's user-contributed reports about what it's like to live in cities and countries around the world. I'd love to hear some feedback if anyone else is interested in this sort of thing!
- nkvl 13y agoIt's a great idea! Not crazy about the busy background, but that might be an age thing. More importantly for me, having the "anonymous" label for posts is a bit of a distraction. Are the user names revealed only while logged in? If so, I'd hide that field from the unregistered masses, it doesn't inspire trust.
- istorical 13y agoHey thanks for the feedback! Right now if a user is registered and logged in when they post it shows "username's reflections" rather than "anonymous' reflections", but I suppose that's there's no signal just noise with that word, so I should probably remove it. Good call! I change my mind every other day whether I should give up on trying to have a super bold design and just strip it down or if I should stick with the polarizing stuff haha. It's my first web design that I've tried to give a more unique look rather than a Google-esque function before form type treatment.
- dualogy 13y agoLove the idea and the site. Now to be notified of new posts? No FB Page.. no Twitter.. doesn't even seem to have good ol' RSS feed (not that I'd really use it, though I probably should switch back to that from that damned social media). Look I'm not going to set a reminder to regularly check back what new stories you got -- do you really want only "once a year by chance" visitors? Get that subscription funnel going. And yeah don't try to get membership signups for just that one feature, not gonna happen. Might sign up and contribute even at my own leisure at some distant future date, but right now --- offer some feed or other to even keep us passive lurkers out there fed ;)
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- jrs99 13y agoArticle is VERY accurate. Japanese, especially, hate imperfection and believe that everything should be perfect, without any asymmetry or irregularity.
- avighnay 13y agoIf Japanese hated asymmetry then why was Yumi - an asymmetrical bow the choice weapon for he world famous Samurais http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumi Generalism may help paint ourselves into nice little circles for easy digestion by our brains but let's at least give it a fight :-)
- jrs99 13y agoEveryone in Japan would say quality was equal to perfection, so I'd probably say nobody in Japan is a Samurai anymore who needs a bow.
- zachrose 13y agoHow does that jive with wabi-sabi (which I've come to understand as roughly "rustic grace and worldliness")?
- jrs99 13y agoWell, the article says that almost everyone in Japan will say that quality = perfection. But wabi-sabi is definitely the aesthetic of imperfection. Maybe that is something older people and the ancient japanese people believe in? wabi-sabi doesn't even really need to have anything to do with quality.
- zachrose 13y agoIt's particularly cool that "quality" is the word dissected in this article. Robert Pirsig wrote a whole book[1] about Quality: specifically the unique characteristic that it doesn't completely resides in an object itself, nor does it reside completely within the subject experiencing the thing. [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060589469 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060589469
- mynameishere 13y agoWhat if I came to America and tried to start a company that helped people stay at home and get drunk alone...blah blah blah Sivers responds: Touché Touché? What if I came to America and tried to start a...liquor store? Where you can buy a bottle of vodka at 90 percent off, compared to clubs? Totally novel, right? Unthinkable. Obviously, if the Singapore retail experience described in this article is correct, any entrepreneur there is going to look for ways to change that. Besides, a huge amount of product from amazon is boring stuff like nappies and soap and ground coffee. People don't buy those things during a social event.
- nl 13y agoTouché? What if I came to America and tried to start a...liquor store? Where you can buy a bottle of vodka at 90 percent off, compared to clubs? Totally novel, right? Unthinkable. Most people buy at liquor stores to take to a social event. That reinforces the story's point, not contradicts it. Liquor stores don't compete with clubs on price, they compete with each other and other sources of take-away alcohol.
- venus 13y agoOn their face these WoodEgg books look very attractive. I having been toying with the idea of setting up a company elsewhere than Australia, and would be very interested in an in-depth survey. Anyone who owns one care to share their thoughts?
- hboon 13y agoI read the Singapore version out of curiosity because I stay here. Most of the stuff can be researched online. But you'd probably have to spend much more time doing that research and can't verify the results easily. And this is for a city that already has quite a lot of information online. Worth purchasing, I would say.
- avighnay 13y agoHowever earnest, such efforts always end up being a narrow perspective which when successful becomes even more dangerous as then the one persons stereotype becomes an 'accepted fact' (case in point the Indian head nod references, What!) The only way to do this would be to avoid being your culture centric and wherever you go start with respect for that culture and then open your eyes, ears and mind as the first step During business visits to Europe, I have had Indian colleagues who cringed up their faces short of vomiting at the sight of a rare beef steak and have had European colleagues come and track down that 'cow on the road photo shoot' as their first biz agenda. Now that is not the right start and it does not need a book to tell you that you have to respect others way of life.
- jpatokal 13y agoSigh. Another facile "ooh, different language/cultures are so very different" story, coating a nugget of truth in a thick layer of bullshit. Having lived in the US, Japan and Singapore, rest assured that in any of these, a washing machine (or car or mobile phone or...) that falls apart in a week is considered low quality, regardless of how new (Korea), shiny (Japan) or expensive (China) it looks. Sure, each of those three cultures has those preferences for appearance and you'll need to take that into account for design and marketing, but material quality (Jp. 品質 hinshitsu, Ch. 品质 pinzhi) still means exactly that everywhere: how well it's built to spec, how long it lasts, etc. Also, I am completely not buying that story about somebody refusing a dented shipping container just because it's dented. Think about it for a second: if somebody offered you a shipping container full of goods, and said giant metal box looked like it had fallen from a crane, would you buy it? Hell no, at least not without inspecting every piece inside for damage and a hefty discount for my troubles.
- est 13y agoquality can translate into two slightly different words in Chinese 品质 (grade) vs 质量 (quality) I think the author only refers to the former, but the latter means exactly the same as American English.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- linux_devil 13y ago> "“This is why you can’t just take your brilliant American business idea and go make it happen in China, India, or Indonesia." I don't see much of difference in definition of quality when it is described as in "Japan" and "U.S" . I don't get this , what is difference between "it is perfect" and "it's well built and it will last". I am not buying this piece either and because I am born and brought up in India , I know better how quality is defined in India and it's different from what author is trying to justify.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
- gumby 13y agoThe "culture shock" series is pretty good too, aimed more at people who actually move to the country. The difficulties with books like this are 1> they age quickly 2> they are hard to generalise (books of the same length for the Netherlands and India will have wildly different levels of resolution) and of course the authors will be different. This wood egg approach seems like a reasonable way to deal with the latter. I've lived in five countries the only general statement I can make is that people are the same everywhere, and completely different as well.
- grecy 13y agoHave people never left their own countries? This is one of the first things you figure out when venturing abroad. Nothing beats a summer day in thongs.
- allochthon 13y agoYes. I've lived abroad for years. Apart from local colloquialisms, English words commonly used in the industry convey basically what one would think they would convey. This blog post is exaggerating things a little to make a point. The "thongs" play on words is a funny one, though.
- zhte415 13y agoQuality is defined in the Service Level Agreement.
- bitwize 13y agoAnd if you ask a Six Sigma drone, even here in Murka, "quality" means little variation from piece to piece. "Quality" is one of those things like "value" that doesn't refer to a specific thing, but must always be reckoned against human desires. Like, gold doesn't have "intrinsic value". It has value to us because it's rare and shiny, and humans like shiny things. And it's the same thing with quality: things are quality because people like them and consider them useful, reliable, pretty, or whatever. So this article boils down to a bunch of broad cultural stereotypes (Koreans like new things, Japanese like refined things, etc.) without much meaning.
- blackdogie 13y agoIt does seem like a bit of an ad splash page. But on the topic of different meanings, my favourite example is in Greek, you as "Τι κάνετε" "What are you doing" literally but it translates as "How are you?". These things go always translate directly, and if you are speaking with a nonnative it's likely that these things will occur.
- hrktb 13y agoIt's conflating language and expectations. Quality means the same in the US as in EU or China or in Japan, we just don't expect the same level or properties depending on the environment. Quality sushi in Japan is not the same level of expectation as quality sushi in Brazil. A quality car in Sweden won't be judged on the same criteria in Zimbabwe.