5 lessons learned from running my own business

When I started my company, I was warned that 75% of start-ups at the time failed within the first 18 months. That was 2003.

Quite apart from financial prudence, here are some crucial lessons for survival and success I’ve learned:

Posted: 18th February 2020

Finding the right German trade fair for your business

Competitive international markets are difficult places to stand out.

The ever-increasing flood of digital communication means that your business can all too easily disappear from view. Nothing still beats clear, direct, face-to-face communication.

Being at the right trade exhibition can bring your business to the front of potential customers’ minds - and keep it there. Each one of the thriving, sector-specific trade fairs in Germany is unique. It provides a real world opportunity for your business to break through the noise.

Almost every sector and type of technology is covered by a specialist trade fair based in Germany.

Each trade fair provides a unique meeting point for its business sector - a way for manufacturers, industry experts, potential customers and business partners to establish and build strong relationships.

Finding your gateway to national and international markets:

Most of the world’s leading trade fairs for many sectors are held in Germany. They provide new opportunities to access markets in Germany, Europe and across the world.

 The key to making one work for you is simple: 

• find the right trade fair for your business
• make detailed plans to get the most of your business opportunities there
• ensure effective staffing and follow-up

Locating trade fairs in Germany is easier than ever. The latest website from the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry: AUMA has an easy-to-use, searchable database.

Making it happen

AUMA offers a wide range of guides, checklists, data and publications – a toolbox to help you get the most out of German trade fairs. Need help with selecting the right trade fair for your business?  Or with planning effectively to make the most of that presence?  Eureko Associates Limited has been helping UK clients to make the most of German trade fairs for almost two decades now.

See our website page outlining our trade fair support services

For support with German trade fairs contact Eureko

Posted: 31st May 2019

Experience is their main asset

The Collins English Dictionary defines the word “asset” as “anything valuable or useful”, and then gives an example of its usage: “experience is their main asset”. That little sentence neatly sums up what I’m going to write about this week. It reminds all of us who work in business that our world is not just being driven by so-called innovation, or by revolutionary technology or by artificial intelligence.

Of course, all these buzzwords refer to real things that are happening in today’s world and have to be acknowledged and welcomed by all of us. We’re all dependent on these dynamic developments, at the very latest when we go into a hospital for an investigation or a procedure, where technology plays an ever more vital rôle. But technology alone is not the solution.

I would argue that experience is just as important in providing a diagnosis to a problem as any piece of equipment. “Experience” is, as the good dictionary rightly claims, an “asset” and it is not restricted to any one time or place, or ceases at any given time.course, all these buzzwords refer to real things that are happening in today’s world and have to be acknowledged and welcomed by all of us.

We’re all dependent on these dynamic developments, at the very latest when we go into a hospital for an investigation or a procedure, where technology plays an ever more vital rôle. But technology alone is not the solution. I would argue that experience is just as important in providing a diagnosis to a problem as any piece of equipment.

“Experience” is, as the good dictionary rightly claims, an “asset” and it is not restricted to any one time or place, or ceases at any given time.

Experience matters

A friend of mine recently retired just before he turned 70, after working all his life captaining vessels all over the world, most recently for a multi-national commercial organisation. He explained why he had chosen to carry on working full-time beyond his 65th birthday: “My company had many orders and needed individuals with my knowledge and my maritime experience to command one of their vessels. I enjoyed helping the company out, making a contribution, and keeping my mind and my body as active as possible.”

I see so many older people in our community doing things that are “valuable” and “useful”, either doing paid work or working for charities on a voluntary basis. Individuals of all ages can be assets for the community, and economy.

An article by Vivien Hacker Waine for the Lancaster & Morecambe Guardian.

Posted: 28th February 2019

Germany v England: a shared cultural good

Many of you will remember the victorious German World Cup team of 2014 holding aloft the most famous trophy in the history of sport which they had just won in the final in Brazil.

Before beating Argentina in that final they had given Brazil a 7-1 drubbing in the semis. The German national soccer team has become associated with almost unparalleled success on the pitch over the past 70 years and can truly be identified with the notion of Expertise.

What we in this country still have difficulty in accepting is that we founded the modern game some one hundred and fifty years ago and the Germans copied us in their grammar schools and academies in the 1870s and 1880s. Then British ex-pats and sailors helped spread the sport in different ports around the world including Bremen and Hamburg.

Even following the events of the First World War British coaches such as Jimmy Hogan were taking their ideas abroad. In 1928 Hogan spent a season at Dresden FC, where a thirteen year old called Helmut Schön learned to worship this football missionary and later referred to him as “my shining role model”. Schön went on to become probably the most successful international manager in the history of the game.

1966 and all that

Indeed, Schön was the coach of the West German team that came to England in 1966. The final between England and Germany at Wembley was memorable as the true beginning of half a century of myth making. And muck raking. And mischief making. From West Germany’s point of view it’s remembered for mainly technical and ethical reasons. Was ‘our’ third goal really a goal or was the Russian linesman who allowed it prejudiced against ‘them’? ‘Our’ victory though went much deeper in the national psyche. It delivered a kind of subliminal justice for ‘us’ plucky little islanders who had stood up to the mighty German foe in two earlier military conflicts, and once again on the battlefield of sporting rivalry had shown who was superior – on and off the field. We might have lost an Empire, our economy might have been struggling against the post-war miracle-making German industrial machine, but we had produced The Beatles, Twiggy, James Bond, Bobby Moore and a hat-trick from Geoff Hurst in the final against Germany.

These inter-twined myths sustained ‘us’, with the aid of a rampant mass media, for exactly another 40 years. A sport that had originally brought the youth of the two countries together for the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, had helped as a spectacle entertain the working classes of the two nations throughout the first 60 years of the twentieth century, and provide recreation to millions of men and women here and over there for nearly a century, was being hijacked by part commercially incentivised and part politically indoctrinated individuals in Britain.

Building bridges

As someone who had spent much of his adult life learning to appreciate the German language, way of life and people and trying to build bridges first as a teacher in German schools and universities and then in British educational institutions, I found this development a profoundly depressing experience. I had watched Germans learning to confront their past, learn from their mistakes and make formidable changes to their moral, political and social philosophy and behaviour, whilst I sensed my own nation was deeply confused and unwilling to face new realities. In the summer of 1996 when the European Championships were held in England, our distorted perspectives on Anglo-German history reached a nadir. The Daily Mirror in its reporting on the Euros sank to this new low level. Its headline the day before the semi final match between England and Germany read: ACHTUNG! SURRENDER For you Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over.

Staff and students in the German department of the School of Modern Languages at Lancaster University wrote the following letter to the Editor (a gentleman called Piers Morgan):

Dear Sir,

As members of a university department committed to improving and strengthening good relations between Britain and Germany we are writing to express our anger at the Mirror’s Monday edition. Young people in our department, both British and German, were dismayed by your so-called humour and have said that this has spoiled what has so far been a friendly and good-natured sporting event. Instead of extolling the virtues of a tournament which brings together so many different tongues, traditions and cultures of our continent you are turning back the clock to an era when European leaders and opinion-formers were engaged in inciting old hatreds and fatal national rivalries. As an important opinion-former we ask you in future to consider ways of presenting events such as Euro 96 which help to sell your paper but also help to inform us about a Europe which is real and recognisable.

Needless to say, we received no apology personally from the Mirror, but Piers Morgan was publicly criticised for his xenophobia in many quarters and forced to say he was sorry. Maybe a turning point? Who knows.

A new era

Arguably it was in 2006 when Germany hosted the World Cup that a new, un-blinkered generation of English football fans, accompanied by a much less partisan and backward-looking media, physically encountered a host country magnanimously open to all fans and visitors. A kind of closure was effected there in the stadia and especially the huge open squares of German towns and cities in which English fans and many other nationalities enjoyed a football fest together with their German hosts.

A couple of years later, around 2008 I met a young German scholar at Lancaster University who was as passionate about football as I was. His name was Kristian Naglo. He not only talked football, he also played it. He had played at very high levels of German youth and amateur football, and now in England was playing for a very good North Lancashire works’ side. Whoever I met from the local amateur soccer scene spoke of the ‘German star player’. That grass roots view was, and is, far more typical of how we respond to ‘German influences’ than what the media would have us believe. Several years later Kristian and I together with 12 British and German academics explored Football Culture in England and Germany in a book of essays written in both English and German entitled On and Off the Field. It also has a timeline of the football game in England and Germany.

Of course Kristian Naglo isn’t the only ‘German star’ to help foster good Anglo-German relations on and off the pitch. It’s well worth concluding this blog by reminding ourselves of the charismatic coach at Liverpool FC. Jürgen Klopp has just steered the club to the apex of European football, the Champions League final. He enjoys an equally good human reputation as a product of German sport and society, who has adapted to the British way of life, and its way of thinking. As such he has become a true catalyst for developing further bonds between the two countries and cultures which are no longer based on national - and even racial - stereotypes but on how the two nations can genuinely learn from one another. He is helping to make football a cultural good to be shared and enjoyed by competing nations – a far, far cry from 1966 and all that.

Tony Waine

"In sum, ‘On and Off the Field’ is a highly recommendable book. Not just for football fans, but also for readers interested in cultural studies in general. Hopefully, the dual Anglo-German perspective, which even shows in all the English contributions being written in English and all the German contributions in German, will be followed in future projects."       

Review by Hans Henrik Appel of On and Off the Field: Fußballkultur in England und Deutschland / Football Culture in England and Germany, Anthony Waine and Kristian Naglo (eds.), (Wiesbaden, 2014). In: Sport in History, July 2016

 Posted: 30th May 2018

Tips and techniques for translating German into English

I have recently completed translating two very different types of German text into English. The one was purely technical German for a customer manufacturing vehicle bodies for large logistics and distribution trucks and smaller delivery vans; the other a scholarly piece written for an international volume of sociological essays on food and its mediatisation. They sound very different yet required a similar approach and actually produced similar outcomes.

At a purely quantitative, statistical level the outcomes were strikingly similar. The original German language academic chapter had a word count of approximately 10,800 words. My translation was around 13,300 words long. I had added – or needed to add – a further 25%! The technical translation demanded an almost identical lexical supplement.

Part of the reason for this seemingly prolix approach is that I have always rejected literal renditions from German into English, however word and time conserving that may be. The key battleground for me is idiomatic authenticity versus literal accuracy – even though that may sound crude and mechanistic. Every passage in German invites me to at least partly interpret the original and that means needing to take liberties in my English version. This sums up fairly succinctly my translation philosophy.

As a consequence of this approach I automatically do a style and sound check whilst I’m in the process of translating and of course most systematically when I’ve finished the first major draft. This oral checking routine forces me to read my translation out aloud and reassure myself that it has the right ring and flow to it. It’s my voice. This reading out aloud (and back to myself) invariably requires the addition of some new words and is part of a process of subjective reformulation from the original language. Many of the added words are adverbs and modal particles that our language offers in order to either emphasise a key point or argument or idea, or to help modulate an intricate thought that may consist of several parts and meanings. The product of this style checking and altering is invariably the creation of longer sentences and clauses based around verb-centred structures.

Germans' love affair with nouns

And so now we come closer to the core of challenge facing translators of all and sundry German texts! To put it mildly (and quite sentimentally) Germans have a love affair with their nouns whilst we make our verbs the key players in getting our messages across efficiently. The Germans employ nouns as information carriers, which their semantically programmed mind automatically scans and comprehends. Arguably, our semantic scanning system prefers to seek explanations via clauses containing one or more verbs.

So whenever we literally face any German construction on the page we are being asked to decide just how many of the nouns, and especially the noun compounds, we can still leave in our translation and which of them require more radical trans-formational surgery. The English translator has to upset the German romantic attachment to their aptly called ‘Hauptwörter’ (‘main’ or ‘chief’ or ‘principal words’, i.e. nouns) and substitute one of our ‘Tätigkeitswörter’ (activity words, i.e. verbs). Of course this is bound to add extra words since a new clause is being created. Or, alternatively, when breaking down compound nouns one can or must substitute an adjective for one of the nouns comprising the compound. Frequently too the noun assumes such a predominant position in German syntax that it is left without an article so this may well need to be added. The word count is already mounting …

But if we think that noun concatenations are the only bugbear for the English mind to wrap itself around and de-concatenate, then we are deluding ourselves. German sentences do indeed have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. The translator is often left Desperately Seeking the Subject. And when we do eventually unearth it, we have to then re-assemble a sentence entirely and make sure it sounds as if a much more simple (!) English-language mind has constructed it. This is what I meant in my introductory paragraphs with ‘taking liberties’.

Our language likes to foreground and highlight the subject (the ‘doing’ element) and make everything else follow on inexorably from this. And if it helps you, as it often does, to carry out surgically strategic cuts then do so with confidence. Create a second, or even a third, main clause through full stops and thus simplify the sentence in question. Indeed, go well beyond this and be willing to break up whole paragraphs too in the name of comprehensibility by splitting into two more manageable paragraphs. This will necessitate – yet again – inserting more connecting words or clauses but the result is what matters.

Punctuation matters

Punctuation is a great tool in the hands of the translator. As I’ve just suggested, use our full stop to break up unwieldy sentences and over-weight paragraphs. But also use full stops in the many instances where the German language will use a colon followed by what is to all intents and purposes a new idea or point. Similarly, Germans use hyphens more than we do in order to squeeze yet another key point into a sentence. We would either substitute a full stop for the hyphen or a comma can suffice.

One needs to use one’s discretion with commas in general, as we know how crucial and regulated their function is in German. Intuitively I would estimate that up to 70% of commas found in German syntax are redundant in ours. Certainly in German texts consisting of large amounts of critical, analytical discourse the comma count can be significantly reduced. And so can the use of parentheses. For example, whilst I have bracketed a number of points in the above blog I’ve deliberately kept my thoughts as free flowing as possible, and therefore, I hope, both accessible and unconditional. Certain types of written German will employ parentheses, as well as hyphens, to add provisos, caveats and other qualifications to their main assertion and thus to forestall likely criticisms and rebukes. There’s even a construction much used in German which cleverly allows this formulating of an argument and a counter-argument in one and the same sentence. One half of a statement will contain the word ‘zwar’, whilst the second half will feature the word ‘aber’, ‘doch’, or ‘jedoch’. We have no equivalent for this clever argument-moderating device. So, off you go and find examples of this usage and think of as many ways as possible of translating it! Today’s assignment!

Taking a subjective approach

To summarise: my approach to translating is without doubt subjective. I do respect as far as possible the original facts and ideas found in the many different types of text I’m asked to translate. The German material I’m given by a client I do take seriously. But I’m guided equally by the responsibility towards the reader or end user of the material I’m communicating with, which means I have to aim for clarity and comprehensibility. Otherwise the original facts and thoughts literally get Lost in Translation. And, as I’ve been demonstrating in this blog, I’m steered by an awareness of some fundamental differences in the ways in which German and English speakers express themselves. This necessary sensitivity to difference adds a further layer of subjectivity. Yet, finally, it also creates that sense of satisfaction and even pleasure in de-coding the German mind and German experience for the benefit of English readers throughout the world.

Tony Waine

For more details about our translation services, please see here

Posted: 8th April 2018

Build your business in Germany with a .de website

Are you looking to maintain access to markets in Germany?

The right .de website makes your business searchable - and findable - to potential German customers. Without it your business may simply be invisible in Germany.

German taste in adverts - and websites - is very different to that in the UK. There is much more emphasis on features and facts - much less appeal to emotion.

Why a German website is now a must-have:

Developing a .de website shows your clients and potential customers in Germany that you are here to stay. Your website can act as a (perfectly translated) online brochure - presenting exactly the information your potential clients require when they need it. A well-designed, highly functional, focused German website can raise your organisation’s profile.

It can help you win new German customers and keep them. It can help to create and maintain your credibility in the German market.

Eureko's Vivien Hacker Waine says: “Germans approach web research differently. Picking the right information and presenting it in the most appropriate way for the German market is absolutely critical. It really levels the playing field against your competitors.”

How to be there for your customers in Germany

Six key steps to increase your website’s impact and findability within Germany:

•    Identify the parts of your current website that are most relevant to Germany
•    Create content to fill in any gaps
•    Structure it all in a way that makes sense to potential German customers
•    Translate the content into perfect German
•    Create new domain names for a .de website - and test these
•    Develop Keyword lists and strategies for Search Engine Optimisation in Germany

How Eureko could help your business

Our bilingual and native German speaker specialists can work with you to create a punchy German website that helps your business win more business profitably.

For support with website translations please see our translation services or contact Eureko

Posted: 18th August 2017

Berlin's European destiny

The idea of a united Europe and of the Euro as a stable common currency has been much debated especially over the past ten years when the global financial crash severely destabilised individual national economies as well as international economic systems. The United States and the United Kingdom have become fierce critics of both the currency union and the political structures of a unified Europe, regularly predicting or possibly even wishing for the collapse of both.

At the centre of their critiques is, implicitly and explicitly, the role and influence of Germany. A recent private visit to Berlin got me thinking about this question and where I stood personally as a member of a nation that had very recently voted to reject the idea of a united Europe along with the commitments which that brought with it.

My first visit to Berlin took place in the summer of 1963 when I drove with my German pen friend in his car across West Germany and on to West Berlin through the German Democratic Republic where I recall seeing graffiti on its motorway bridges telling us westerners ‘Hände weg von Kuba’ – ‘Hands off Cuba’ – the Cuban missile crisis the previous year had frightened the living daylights out of me!

I was half way through my sixth form studying German at A Level, so the encounter with West and East Berlin was fascinating. I was immediately struck by the omnipresence of other nations in the city, notably the Russians, the Americans, the French and the British. I visited and learned how beautiful new housing developments in West Berlin such as the Hansaviertel had been designed by international architects and marvelled at the splendidly futuristic Kongresshalle.

Why did a city, I naïvely asked myself back then, that had been so badly destroyed less than 20 years previously look so much smarter and more modern than my bedraggled Victorian and Edwardian home town of Leicester in the East Midlands? On the other hand why, in order to go from one part of the same city to another, did I have to travel with my pen friend via a strange station called the Friedrichstrasse, alight there, be separated from him because he was a West German, be checked and then escorted on my own by an armed security guard around the back of the Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, and who was desperate to inform me about something or somebody and to enlist my help, and I just couldn’t make out what he was so urgently communicating? A German A Level in 1963 had little to do with acquiring communicative skills. It meant studying the texts of eighteenth and nineteenth century German writers from the literary canon, rather than decoding pleas for help from East Berlin border officials. What did he want from me? To this day I still feel disappointed and guilty that I let this young man down.

And that mystery-filled encounter sums up my early experience of the divided, disorientating world of Berlin. I had never experienced before then such a strong feeling of dis-location, and therefore of having to make sense of a place and a people.

This bafflement was intensified, as you might imagine, when on consecutive days I found myself standing on either side of a wall of concrete; once in front of a sign reading ‘Grenzgebiet’ (‘border region’) on the East Berlin side, and then gazing across the same strange wall from the West Berlin end at a group of sightseers on a raised platform gazing back at us. And, standing forlornly aloof and sadly deserted in the centre of this bewildering and dis-connected world of bemused voyeurs, was an edifice I learned was called the Brandenburger Tor.

 54 years later I walked along Unter den Linden with thousands of other tourists, through the no longer stranded Brandenburg Gate, then wandered over to the right past the Reichstag, glimpsing Norman Foster’s glass dome that allows the visiting viewer to peer into the democratic processes taking place below, then sauntered across mainly open ground towards the beckoning modernity of the Hauptbahnhof. It no longer mattered, as it did in 1963, whether I was walking from East to West, or from West to East. Getting my bearings physically or linguistically or ideologically, as in the 1960s, was irrelevant. Like the Reichstag itself, things had become light-filled. What intrigued me on that walk of barely a mile was where Germany stood right now, and where I stood as an Englishman as I looked in on a Germany that had moved from the piles of rubble of May 1945, through an occupation era that had heralded such deep divisions and split Berlin itself into two halves, and then onwards to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and finally on to reunification?

The undeniably subjective effect on me of this mile long stroll and its milestones was powerful yet genuinely surprising. Walking leisurely and freely past those symbolic buildings and public spaces, with their historical names and associations, crossing the Spree over a pedestrian bridge and looking down on groups of people milling about on the grassy verge for pleasure just a stone’s throw from Europe’s most influential parliamentary chambers, finally arriving at the postmodern bulwark of the central railway station, convinced me that Germany’s vision for itself is now absolutely – and defiantly – clear. It has a sense of destiny which unlike in previous eras is not mis-guided (and if I had taken a left turn out of the Brandenburg Gate I would have almost immediately walked straight into the symbolically located Holocaust memorial site, reminding Germans of just how grotesquely mis-directed some of their previous ideals and visions became).

Now though, without any grand demonstrations of where their future lies, Berlin (and by definition Germany) is being driven by a belief in European integration and it has the will to be a fundamental part of the peaceful reshaping of our continent – just as it is still reshaping itself. So whilst we in the United Kingdom are presently searching for a new vision for ourselves Germany, symbolised in and by its capital city, has modelled that vision for itself, based on knowledge of a clear destination, Europe, and of an even clearer destiny: to be a key agent of European peace and prosperity.

Tony Waine

Posted: 11th August 2017

Choosing your export destination: the German market – big and on your doorstep...

There seems to be increasing support available from Government advisors on some of the more unusual export markets. Does it make more sense to focus your business resources on reaching a new market far away or on an established, thriving market close to home?

Following the 2016 UK referendum vote to leave the European Union there has been a lot of talk about the potential of less well known export destinations. You can probably guarantee that somebody somewhere in the UK will be working up an idea now to start trying to export their products or services to Tibet, Mali… anywhere in the world.

Businesses need to make the most impact with the least resources. With exporting there’s a lot to be learnt about every single potential market you target…

Eight key questions to ask - before you look to enter any potential export market

• Can you get hold of effective, detailed online and on the ground research in the target country to look at possibilities?
• Do you have access to genuinely bilingual support to ensure market information and contracts can be seamlessly and accurately translated into English?
• Can you get hold of well-researched, factual information about opportunities in the target country to work out your best strategy for that market?
• Can you produce promotional material in the native language that meets local expectations?
• Can you identify key potential clients and organisations?
• Can you visit the country easily to maintain relationships?
• Do you have up to date, good working knowledge of the native languages and business culture in your organisation - or have access to help with that?
• Can you handle direct communication/enquiries from the country or do you have cost-effective access to ongoing specialist support? 

About Germany

Before, during and after Brexit, the largest, nearest, most important single market for your products or services could well be Germany.

With a population of 82 million, Germany is currently experiencing its highest consumer confidence for 15 years – and it is rising (while the UK’s is down and falling).

Germany remains the world’s third largest exporter and a massive importer from the UK. The economy is doing consistently well with growth now forecast for 2017 at 1.8% and 2018 at 2.0% (Munich-based Ifo economic institute). Inward investment in 2016 was at record levels – including significantly from the UK which is the 4th largest investor in Germany.

If you are in a position to supply world class German manufacturing companies you may well find your products or services being re-exported on across the world. Even to unusual export destinations – but seamlessly for your organisation.

So, if you are considering exporting to Germany, Eureko’s Language Bridge offers you genuinely bilingual support. With our first-hand experience of the German business culture and mentality, we can produce appropriate slogans and promotional materials in German.

For more details of how we have helped our UK customers in the past, see our Case Study: Hands-on Help with Exporting Checkpoint® to Germany

Posted: 20th July 2017

Case Study: Hands-On Help with Exporting Checkpoint® to Germany

The Birth of Checkpoint®

The Checkpoint® loose wheel nut indicator is the brain child of Mike Marczynski. Over 25 years ago Mike was running a toxic waste disposal company, and when one of the vehicles in his fleet almost lost a wheel, Mike started to think about how to prevent such a disaster from happening in the future.

Had the wheel come off completely, the damage would not only have been of a material kind, but could quite easily have been life-threatening for the lorry driver, for other road users, and even for pedestrians who happened to be in the vicinity of a flying wheel coming off a moving vehicle. Furthermore, the dangerous goods being transported, in this case toxic waste, would have had severe environmental consequences had they spilled out.

So the idea for a device to indicate when there is wheel nut movement on vehicles was born. The real beauty of the idea was that the vehicle owner or driver or maintenance technician would be able to see at a glance whether the wheel nuts are correctly aligned or have moved. In the latter case, they would know immediately that they have to re-torque the wheel nuts in order to prevent possible wheel detachment.

What a simple idea! And what enormous benefits has this brainwave of Mike Marczynski’s had. Once he had developed his original idea and began offering it to fleets, he encountered some initial resistance and scepticism. Then a breakthrough came when a large national company equipped their whole fleet with Mike’s products, and Mike’s company never looked back. However, he realised that such a product was not only beneficial to road users in the UK, but could also help to improve the safety and roadworthiness of vehicles throughout the world.

Today Checkpoint® is a global company selling a full range of safety products in over 80 countries on 6 continents!

For more information about this unique company and its global success story, see the Checkpoint® website.

Our Eight-Point Plan for Doing Business with Germany...

Eureko Associates has been working with Checkpoint® since late 2005. Our aim has been to market and sell the innovative Checkpoint® range of safety critical products to the massive German commercial vehicle market. Over the past decade Eureko has successfully established and grown the Checkpoint® presence in the German market. How did we do it?

1. Market research
Detailed online and on the ground research in Germany looking in-depth at the German commercial vehicle market and identifying best entry points.

2. Translating German sources and materials into English
Making sure that Checkpoint® fully understood how the German commercial vehicle market operates, and providing authentic information about potential partners. We ensure that nothing gets lost in translation!

3. Supplying well-researched information that Eureko had sourced in Germany
Discussing findings with Checkpoint® and evolving a strategy with the customer.

4. Producing promotional material in German
German advertising is different to that in the UK. The Germans mainly want the facts rather than fancy narratives, so we ensure that promotional material is tailored to the German taste.

5. Establishing key contacts and links
Identifying potential clients and organisations early on so that Checkpoint® could make key decisions about how best to proceed.

6. Business visits to Germany
Regularly accompanying Checkpoint’s international sales team on trips to Germany, supporting negotiations, and helping to avoid common linguistic misunderstandings and cultural faux-pas. In this way effective long-term business relationships were built on secure foundations.

7. Cutting company’s costs through outsourcing to Eureko
We provide Checkpoint with a contact office for direct communications with Germany so that our customer’s overheads are kept to a minimum.

8. Working closely together with the client
Eureko has been involved in detailed product briefings and continues to work closely with all staff across Checkpoint®. The cooperation between Eureko and Checkpoint® proves how successful and beneficial for both sides a close and trusting relationship can be.

Eureko’s Vivien Hacker Waine sums it up like this: “We’ve now been working closely together with Checkpoint® for over 10 years. Checkpoint® makes brilliant safety products, so it’s all about keeping people and the environment more secure. Eureko understands how Germany and the German business mind work. Together, we’ve been able to build a great market in Germany for this innovative company. And healthy sales figures prove it.” 

Mike Marczynski, MD of Checkpoint Safety Global HQ, says: “Eureko has been an amazing partner in helping us break into German-speaking markets. Their services and professional assistance have always been of the highest calibre, and we’d certainly recommend them to any company seeking the best quality sales support in Germany. On top of that, both Vivien and Tony, as principals of the Company, are great people to get along with!”

 Vivien with Checkpoint's MD Mike Marczynski at their global headquarters

 Posted: 9th March 2017

Profiting from international trade fairs

Trade fairs are being held every year in cities across Europe. They are ideal events for anyone involved in international trade.

They are a good starting point for any business looking to export their goods, but wanting to research the market before committing time and money.

I've been a regular visitor to trade fairs for nearly twenty years now, and here is a quick overview of my experiences...

Trade fairs actually began in medieval Germany when churches and the land around them were used by local traders to display and sell their wares. In fact the German word for trade fair is 'Messe' which is directly derived from the word meaning a religious service, i.e. 'mass'. So, as in any market place, you meet people and in particular the companies exhibiting their wares, and you get a taste and a feel of exactly what they are offering, i.e. their Products. In several instances companies who have contacted me to advise them have done so after exhibiting at a show where foreign visitors to their stand have remarked on how their purely UK-based product would find interest outside the UK!

Another by-product of visits to trade fairs abroad or staffing a stand is the forming of Relationships, so that future business done by email or over the phone is made more personal. The encounters at trade fair stands present you with Opportunities to develop face-to-face conversations which eventually lead to orders being placed in the future. Trade fairs are about Forward-looking exchanges, sometimes purely small talk, but frequently they are about Information. You enquire at a stand, you collect data and impressions, and you quickly have the basis to help you make decisions in the future about buying goods or how best to sell them.

And if a company sends out a group of colleagues to explore a future market or sell to it, then the visit, if properly planned, can and will develop Team-thinking and bonding.

People and Products; cross-cultural Relationships; Opportunities for the future; Forward-looking exchanges; Information giving and gathering; and the optimal human outcome of Team-building and strengthening provide the foundation for PROFITable international trading.

To find out how we can help you prepare for a trade fair visit or represent your business at a trade fair see our trade fair support services or contact us.

Posted: 19th January 2017

Our Europe

I first hitch-hiked across Europe in the summer of 1962. I had O levels in French and German in my rucksack. It was the same procedure every summer for the next five years. I would leave my home city of Leicester by bus, travel down to London, change at Victoria Bus Station, go on to Dover, take the ferry across to Ostend (often at night) and finally stand with dozens of other hitch hikers patiently waiting for a car or van or lorry to stop, pick us up and carry us into the unknown heart of the continent.

What then followed had little or nothing to do with the politics or economics of countries, let alone any grand ideologies. But rather a daily goal might be loosely planned - a town, a region, a youth hostel. Whether I ever made it to any particular destination

though depended on pure chance and on the kindness of total strangers with whom I shared an intimate space for 2 or 20 or 200 kilometres. It was in that space and in the recreation rooms, refectories and dormitories of countless youth hostels between Oslo and Vienna, Strasbourg and Stockholm, Luxembourg and Hamburg, that I became ever more mindful of voices, my own included, who were constructing stories about themselves in a more hopeful and free post-war world. Europe was being verbally re-imagined in these everyday, random encounters and scenarios.

Such encounters with a very human European reality created in me a unique sense of shared feelings expressed in languages I was slowly and surely mastering. Bridges that had often been literally blown up just 20 years previously were being re-built by strangers like myself and the individuals who stopped to give me a lift – itself a spontaneous act of unconditional human decency.

Such conversations across borders and cultures within the same continent have become completely natural ones for millions of ordinary people, and whatever the rhetoric of interests groups may try to tell us in the run-up to the referendum, there is now a fundamentally human understanding stretching back over several generations of ordinary British people that we have built personal bridges to our fellow Europeans after 1918 and 1945 that are intact and will last.

Tony Waine 

Posted: 20th May 2016

Case Study: Translating into English for Major German Trailer Manufacturer SPIER

As everybody knows, the German automotive sector is huge and has a long history of combining technical expertise with design flair. Its impressive range of products are in demand the world over.

Spier is a German vehicle company that is typical of this very important branch of German industry. It belongs to that key section of the German economy known as the Mittelstand which we in the United Kingdom are envious of and wish to emulate. Founded in 1872 Spier GmbH & Co. Fahrzeugwerk KG is a family-run business presently in the capable hands of the fourth generation. It specialises in the manufacturing of bespoke vehicle bodies and trailers.

Like so many German businesses it has built up export markets throughout the world. And just as it sets quality and efficiency as its key criteria in the development of transport concepts to meet the varied logistics needs of a vast range of haulage and delivery firms, so it demands the highest standards in the precision and clarity of its English language brochures and website.

This is where we at Eureko Associates stepped in. In 2014 Spier put the translation of the entire website out to tender, and chose our company to carry out the specialist work which ran to some 30,000 words in total. 

Our highly experienced, bilingual three person team approached the task in the following rigorous way. Alexandra Wood and Tony Waine, English native speakers, carried out the initial translation, with each one then critically reading through the other’s first draft. The primary aim of Tony and Alex was to achieve accuracy and authenticity so that anyone reading the English version would automatically assume that this text was indeed the original with absolutely no traces of German idiom, tone or style still audible.

Eureko’s Managing Director, Vivien Hacker, a native German speaker who has lived in England since 1998 and has a fluent command of the English language too, checked this translation against the original at every stage. Only when she was perfectly satisfied that the English translators had done full justice to every last nuance of the technical German, was it passed on to Spier.

To ensure the complete satisfaction of Spier Fahrzeugwerk with our work, Vivien Hacker was in regular contact with Mr Andreas Fast, Spier’s Sales Department and Marketing Manager. He would always supply us with full verbal and visual information wherever Eureko sought linguistic perfection. Excellent communications between Germany and the UK regarding every aspect of the product led to the project becoming a genuinely productive collaboration between our two companies. 

What did SPIER think of Eureko?

“When looking for an agency / supplier to translate our brochures and website we searched for one who showed they had a very good command of both languages, German and English, in all their subtleties, including the technical concepts. We found that Eureko offered all these things. Throughout the entire duration of the project a very high degree of specialist knowledge and an excellent level of punctuality regarding deadlines were displayed.”

Andreas Fast, Leiter Vertriebssteuerung und Marketing, SPIER GmbH & Co. Fahrzeugwerk KG

Posted: 24th January 2016

What a difference a word makes

I was recently asked to give a radio interview about the forthcoming publication of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  A German research institute has been preparing a critically annotated edition of the book the German dictator wrote in the mid 1920s about his life and his political ideas.  These ideas were to shape the beliefs and policies of the Nazi party and thus many of them would affect the lives of tens of millions of people across Europe and beyond when Hitler became Germany’s leader between 1933 and 1945.

One could justifiably argue that this text and its universally recognised title should be classified as belonging amongst the most macabre products of the twentieth century mind.  With the critical edition of Mein Kampf imminent – it will appear in January 2016 – the media world-wide expressed its reaction.  My brief interview as a specialist on German language and culture since the late 1960s was to be a contribution to the erupting controversy over its publication for the first time in 70 years in its original language by a German publisher, i.e. since the end of the Second World War in 1945.

I only had a few hours to prepare for the questions posed early the next morning by the radio show’s presenter, so quickly did some research about the story’s background and started to tentatively formulate my opinions in my mind.  One thought in particular though started to creep into the more general process of critical reflection on this issue: the translation into English of the book’s title.  It should be said that the original German title is so universally recognised that it’s frequently left un-translated and not further commented on.

When, however, a translation is given it is mostly though not always rendered as My Struggle.  That literal translation personally sticks in my gut.  It expresses the pathos and the drama of an individual who pictures himself as the ‘little man’, the quasi-victim in other words.  The German word ‘Kampf’ can certainly express that notion. But the word frequently conveys the much more aggressively loaded image of a ‘battle’, or a ‘fight’ or ‘physical contest’.  That is indeed how Hitler saw his world and formulated his instinctive stance towards that world.  The title he chose is explicit and elementary.  It was to be a battle of wills, and Mein Kampf stands for a declaration of war against a nation’s and a people’s (imagined) oppressors.  The book’s title could therefore legitimately be rendered as My Battle, or My Fight or My War.  Those words capture much more truthfully the tenor of the author’s voice.

The translator’s task is never straightforward or mechanical, whatever area they are working in.  They rarely have a purely technical function.  Rather, they carry a moral and cultural responsibility as well.  In the case of one of the most evil and manipulative diatribes of the modern age we can see what a difference one single word can make.

Tony Waine

Posted: 5th January 2016

"But everyone speaks English!"

"But everyone speaks English". We hear this all the time in Britain as an excuse for not learning languages. This excuse seeps into business as well: from the decision not to translate your website, to choosing a non-linguist to represent you at that key international trade fair. But what's the truth? Having lived in France, Germany, the Netherlands and now Belgium, I can unequivocally say that, while many claim to be native-level English-speakers, this simply isn't true. Take for example this philosophical sign that I recently found at a Belgian campsite:

 OK, you probably understand what this sign is trying to say (although you are most likely wondering what on earth questions of time have to do with rubbish). But what this sign shows us is that not everyone is as good at English as we, or they themselves, think. Someone somewhere is so confident in their poor English that they laminated it. This wasn't a first draft. This was the finished product. And OK, maybe this sign isn’t important in the grand scheme of things and perhaps the most harm it will do is make a British woman spend her time writing a blog about it... maybe you're right. 

But the sign is more likely just the tip of the iceberg, with over confidence in language skills potentially having far reaching consequences for the campsite’s business. Choosing the wrong keywords placed on their website could mean losing out on that extra boost to sales. Communication difficulties could be affecting the customer return rate as campers choose a different site next time where they better understand what they are paying for. It could even be affecting the amount of time and money spent on litter-picking...

Communicating in a way understood by your customers can mean the difference between a sale or not. So if you want your business to thrive in international markets, don’t take for granted that everyone speaks English. Make sure you get your website and key documents professionally translated. Choose the right people with the right language skills to help you at those trade fairs so that you win the deals you need. Give the right impression and make it easy for your potential customers to become sales. It will pay off.

Alex Wood

Posted: 19th September 2015

The Common Denominator of German Football and Business

In Germany, business strategy and football strategy are one and the same

For the UK company wanting to export to Europe’s biggest market, there is much to learn from Germany’s football success. German football teams have always had their great, almost legendary individuals. Franz Beckenbauer, to name but one. But key to Germany’s football success is well-prepared tactics of the team as a whole.

The team plays to a system and each player knows exactly what the requisite pattern is. If necessary, that system can be, and will be modified during the game. Flexibility, intelligence, attention to technical detail in the pre-match homework, plus the will to succeed, all blend together impressively. This is no different to German business strategy.

Telling it how it is

German businessmen and women will go into a meeting well-briefed and well-organised having done their research on you. They won’t indulge in small talk and banter during the meeting but will use the time efficiently. Germans prefer meetings to be based on an exchange of clear signals, preferring to save time and money by being straight from the start.

In fact, you can expect business meetings to be like their football matches: systematic and inherently logical. Small details will matter, specific factual information about the product will be sought, potential issues and problems paid special attention from the outset.

The bigger picture

Much like on the football pitch, businessmen and women conducting meetings know their place within the overall structure and systems of their company, however large or small, and understand how a new British product might fit in or not. That doesn’t mean that they will be able to give you a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the spot, but rather that they will want to discuss everything with other figures in their company.

Your discussions at the meeting and ensuing contact will focus on substantial issues rather than, for example, on how best to dress up and market the product. This will take time and patience.

It is essential to prepare for the German business pitch methodically and with technical finesse. Adopting the German business mentality and etiquette is crucial to success. If you don’t pay attention to it, then it’s a case of missed penalties and, even worse, own goals.

On and off the field

"In sum, ‘On and Off the Field’ is a highly recommendable book. Not just for football fans, but also for readers interested in cultural studies in general. Hopefully, the dual Anglo-German perspective, which even shows in all the English contributions being written in English and all the German contributions in German, will be followed in future projects."       

Review by Hans Henrik Appel of On and Off the Field: Fußballkultur in England und Deutschland / Football Culture in England and Germany, Anthony Waine and Kristian Naglo (eds.), (Wiesbaden, 2014). In: Sport in History, July 2016

Posted: 28th June 2015

Why your business needs translating

If your company wants to grow its business through exports, the chances are you will need to hire the services of a translator at some point. Whether it is for your website, marketing, product labels and information or correspondence with foreign partners, distributors or customers.

But what do translators actually do? And why should you invest in a translator rather than simply use free online tools? Eureko has the answers.

Posted: 28th April 2015

Helping great British ideas get into German, Swiss and Austrian markets

Case study: Pacerpole Ltd

We first found out about Pacerpoles, a unique family-run small business on Lake Windermere, from our UKTI International Trade Advisor.

We got in touch with them right away and went over to Windermere to personally meet Heather and Alan Rhodes, the couple who have single-handedly designed the Pacerpoles: amazing aids to healthy posture, hiking performance and physical security in all climes and terrains.

Through getting to know the brains behind this product personally,we learned about the deeply emotional and ethical mission of Heather and Alan to help individuals all over the world to enjoy the natural benefits of walking, trekking and climbing even more safely and therapeutically.

 
We at Eureko have been translating the wealth of information Heather and Alan have produced in order to bring their innovative product to the health-conscious, leisure-active Germans, Austrians and Swiss of all ages. We are also looking into marketing and reseller opportunities.

Matthias Heid, Manager of the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Germany: “For my walks through German forests – my home town is on the edge of the Black Forest - I would automatically use my Nordic walking sticks. The first time I tested the Pacerpoles, I realised their benefits immediately and have never used anything else since. They’re a natural extension of my own limbs.” 

For more information about Pacerpole Ltd, visit: www.pacerpole.com

For hands-on help with exporting, contact Eureko

Posted: 11th January 2015

Exporting British ideas the German way

Just a mile down the road from our house is the local Lidl supermarket. If you take a slightly different route you’ll find an Aldi, again about a mile away. In the few minutes it takes to drive to either of these ubiquitous German grocery and household goods stores you’ll spot (at the very least) several Audis, BMWs and Mercedes, and you may well be sitting behind the wheel of a VW yourself.

Later on in the evening you might then go out for a pint in a pub or restaurant where you order a Pils, produced in a German brewery. And as our thoughts are turned towards Christmas pleasures and consumption, where better to go and have a cup of mulled wine than – you’ve guessed it – a German Christmas Market?

Why have the Germans notched up one commercial success after another – and I’m not even going to mention sporting success on the football pitch …?

Getting the basics right

Behind all these things (and traditions like the Weihnachtsmarkt) is a simple idea to get the basics right; the shape, the feel, the performance, the price. Das Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis. A real mouthful, bigger than a Bratwurst mit Currysauce at a market stall. The relationship of price to performance.

Thinking long term

And when they make things, they’re made to last. Long term planning and production alone lead to long term survival and profitability. It really is a different way of thinking from our own ‘get rich quick’ and ‘be an overnight success’ mythology, isn’t it? A different Weltanschauuung, as our German neighbours might say in fact – another linguistic Bratwurst to chew on, meaning a process of looking at and thinking about the world.

Rational decisions

And when the mass of ordinary Germans look at the world of things as shown in advertisements they expect to see clearly what they’re purchasing and to be convinced that the price is right. No nonsense ads, plenty of factual information, resulting in rational decision making.

A winning combination for profits

Over the past 11 years of helping local companies in England sell to the Germans, we’re always trying to get our clients to think about these ideas and much more before entering Europe’s biggest market. Exporting British ideas the German way – and there are thousands of Great British ideas around – could well be a winning combination and healthy for profits in the long term too.

For hands-on help with exporting to Germany, contact us.

Posted: 23rd November 2014

3 Steps to Exhibiting Successfully at a German Trade Fair

If you run a successful business in the UK and are thinking of expanding into Europe’s biggest market, then trade shows are a must. Here are our three steps to success at a German trade fair. 

1. Research Thoroughly

Knowing your market segment is key groundwork for a trade fair. Thorough research is no mean feat so make sure you start early. One option is to go to an initial trade fair to learn the key facts first-hand. This will help you understand the latest developments in your market segment, preparing you for your exhibition. Make sure you take a German speaker with you so that you don't miss out on any crucial information, or even send a German researcher on your behalf, such as Vivien from Eureko. 

2. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

Once the fundamental research has been done, it is necessary to prepare for the trade show. Inform German companies well in advance that you are planning to exhibit and invite them to your stand, perhaps pre-arranging more formal meetings. It is possible to do nine meetings in nine hours, from 9 till 6 p.m.!

Germans interested in your products will want to see them, especially if the products are big and bulky, so make sure this is arranged.

3. Avoid Communication Breakdowns

Many fairs specialise in one area, these are known as’ Fachmessen’. These fairs attract informed and professional visitors. The fact that so many fairs pride themselves on being specialised means that the visitor to your stand is looking beyond the superficial promotional phrases. They are seeking precise and comprehensive information.

The best way to make sure communication runs smoothly is to provide information in German as well as English. Providing German-language explanations of the company, its philosophy and its products is an expression of courtesy, cultural awareness and communicative clarity, creating a favourable impression on your potential clients.

For help with any of these 3 steps, contact Eureko

Posted: 9th November 2014

German ambassador turns business guru

This week Vivien featured in the Lancaster Guardian as part of the Chamber Chat article series.

As a member of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Vivien is a key player in growing the Chamber's International Trade services - you can read the full article below:

German ambassador turns business guru

Having grown up in the towering German and European financial capital of Frankfurt you would be surprised to learn that Vivien has felt much more at home living and working in Lancaster and Morecambe for the past 16 years. She appreciates the English way of life and especially the customs, traditions and people of the North of England. Vivien had been sent over by the German state in 1998 to teach German language and culture at Lancaster University.

Vivien loved the role of an ambassador for a new re-united Germany and her 5 years teaching at Lancaster University were deeply rewarding. Then came the moment of decision for her. “Do I stay in the sheltered world of academia or do I venture forth into the riskier, outward-looking arena of international trade and exporting?” So in 2003 she founded Eureko Associates and this month her company celebrates 11 years of giving hands-on help to small and medium sized businesses in the North West of England. 

A completely bilingual speaker of English and German Vivien assists companies in the region who have built up a successful base domestically for their product or service, and want to crack the massive market of Europe’s biggest economy: Germany. Her most prestigious client is the Carnforth based Checkpoint, the manufacturers of the innovative wheel nut indicators for trucks and buses. She doesn’t just help HGV wheels on autobahns go round more safely though, she also helps oil the wheels of UK exports more generally by leading workshops for UKTI, the government export driving machine. As a facilitator at these regional workshops, ‘Passport to Export’, she encourages SMEs from all over the North West to adopt the right strategy when taking the bold but risky step of breaking into new markets.

Vivien will therefore be bringing her considerable knowledge of international business networks, cultures and mentalities to help our local Chamber of Commerce build trading and cultural bridges to Europe and beyond.

Posted: 1st November 2014