The play is set in Guiyang, a “small” city of 4.3m inhabitants in south-west China. The performance is in English and Mandarin with English supertitles. Western and Chinese cultures are very different, and people are often puzzled by foreigners’ behaviour. Peter, the British consultant and translator of Daniel, explains to Daniel the concept of guanxi (personal connections). In fact, Guanxi, hierarchy and face, the three musts of Chinese culture, are of paramount importance when you want to do business in China.

In the play, the audience witnesses a Chinese interpreter mangling communication between the American businessman and Minister Cai, a Chinese government official. “We’re a small, family firm” turns into “his company is small and insignificant; ” “I appreciate the frank American style” becomes “He enjoys your rudeness.”

Chinglish’s mistranslations make us laugh, but make sure that when you are doing business you don’t make blunders. Choose a reliable translation service provider. Choose SanTranslate .

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) is an Austin, Texas-based company that documents, analyses and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis on English. It is known for its Top Words of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, High Tech buzzwords and media analytics.

On 9 November the GLM published the Top Words of 2011. The words come from the five continents, a confirmation of the ever expanding influence of the English language. They are culled from throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.58 billion speakers.

1. Occupy – Occupy Movement, the occupation of Iraq, and the so-called ‘Occupied Territories’
2. Deficit – the big problem with Western economies
3. Fracking – Hydraulic fracturing, controversial method for extracting fossil fuels from otherwise unreachable deposits
4. Drone – Remotely piloted aircraft
5. Non-veg – A meal served with meat, originally from India
6. Kummerspeck – A German word to indicate excess weight gained from emotional overeating (grief bacon)
7. Haboob – An Arabic word to indicate massive sandstorms in the American Southwest
8. 3Q – ‘Thank you,’ an example of the ever increasing mixing of numbers and letters to form words
9. Trustafarians – Well-to-do youths (trust-funders) living a faux-Bohemian life style, now associated with the London Riots
10. (The Other) 99 – Referring to the majority of those living in Western democracies who are left out of the dramatic rise in earnings associated with “the Top 1%.”

How will you make your business location stand out as a leading brand? Google has launched yet again a new and interesting proposal: a pilot project allowing the public to look inside shops or offices from Google Map.

The new scheme is on a completely voluntary basis. This new implementation of Street View technology will help businesses to build their online presence. Initially, the roll-out is only for London, Paris and a number of cities in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. Google states they have included restaurants, hotels, shops, gyms and vehicle repair workshops in the project.

Google, however, has excluded big-brand chains, hospitals and law firms from the programme. Business owners must warn their customers and employees before taking pictures, and the American firm will blur out or refuse to publish any images that include bystanders.

Many retailers are increasing their online presence, and this application is a development some businesses will no doubt consider with interest, regardless of the privacy concerns.