A breakdown in communication
The PC brigade are at it again.
They are screaming about a company that “Americanises” a foreign accent. This is discrimination, they scream. This is xenophobia!
In fact I don’t see it as either. If I phone a call centre I expect to speak to someone I understand. I couldn’t give a shite where they are from or the colour of their skin, just so long as we can communicate clearly and concisely. The same applies to anyone with whom I am expected to have a verbal communication. Many times I have been lumbered with someone from Belfast or deepest Glasgow and my attitude has been the same – get me someone I can understand. That doesn’t mean I dislike the person or where they are from. It doesn’t mean I am anti-Belfast or anti-Glasgow. It just means I cannot understand what they are saying!
So I have a problem with some product or service and it’s time to phone for help. I get put through to a bloke who is obviously in deepest Calcutta and the two of us have problems communicating. I get annoyed, but I don’t get annoyed with the poor sod who barely has an understanding of what I am trying to impart. No. I get annoyed with the company who are a bunch of fucking cheapskates and are cutting costs by using foreign labour.
If a company in the States has come up with software that can translate an accent then I say fair play. If it makes the person in the call centre sound a bit computery then that’s fine, just so long as I can understand them and they can understand me. That is assuming of course that they have the ability to solve my problem in the first place.
Now all Sanas has to do is to translate an American accent into proper English.
Good points! Telephone conversations must be understandable – without the visual clues seen in a face-to-face conversation, speech clarity is so much more important.
But American speech needs more than just improvements in accent to make it coherent – they use a lot of weird phrases and terms unknown in the UK.
And vice versa. Historians have determined that the 1700 british spoke exactly like Americans. The upper classes in Britain, at one point, decided to be really cool and adopt a really upper class accent so they would seem really, really cool.