Germany v England: a shared cultural good

One of the images used on our company’s home page is entitled ‘German expertise’. It shows members of 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

Director, Eureko Associates

For hands-on help with exporting to Germany contact Eureko

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

Director, Eureko Associates

For hands-on help with translating contact Eureko

Posted: 8th April 2018

A local perspective - Growth Forum helps connect business and wider local community

 For the past 4 years I have been attending informal meetings of the Growth Forum which take place approximately every 3 months and involve members from the Lancaster City Council, Morecambe BID, Lancaster Vision and our Chamber.

The purpose of these meetings is for all sides involved to be informed about what the Council is working on and planning to do regarding important matters such as housing developments, Bailrigg Garden Village, the Transport Masterplan and Coastal Communities, to name but a few.

These meetings have been chaired in a most supportive way by Andrew Dobson, the Regeneration and Planning Chief Officer of Lancaster City Council. It so happened that the last meeting was Andrew’s final Growth Forum before his retirement. I have always enjoyed these meetings chaired by Andrew because they were informal yet always very informative.

That is probably the secret of the success of these meetings: in a friendly and relaxed environment we have been able to exchange information and discuss crucial issues in such a way that the Council could hear and understand what the business community wants and is concerned about, and that we, i.e. the Chamber, can see what the Council can achieve on our behalf.

Communication and cooperation...

The key words here are communication and cooperation between the Council and the many interests it represents and the Chamber voicing the interests of our business community.

Attending these meetings has shown me once again how vital it is to have civic minded individuals with clear visions for long term growth. Andrew has undoubtedly been one such individual committed to taking the whole Bay region forward.

I’m certainly looking forward to continuing the good cooperation between the Chamber and the Council in our next Growth Forum meeting, whilst wishing Andrew all the very best for his well-deserved retirement!

This article features in Chamber Chat with Lancaster and District Chamber of Commerce

For hands-on help with exporting contact Eureko

Posted: 27th February 2018

Finding the right German trade fair for your business

Almost every sector and type of technology is covered by a powerful trade fair/expo based in Germany. Each provides a unique meeting point for its business sector - a way for manufacturers, industry experts, potential customers & business partners to establish and build strong relationships.

If you run a successful business in the UK - and want to grow your business by exporting to Europe’s biggest market – then a trade show is a must.

It can provide outstanding opportunities to get to grips with your market’s supply chain and to show your competitive edge.

A great range of high quality events to choose from:

To help you decide which trade fair is best for you, some of the most important international trade fairs taking place throughout Germany in 2018 are listed here

Can’t find the type of trade fair that you are looking for on our list? Looking for more regional and international trade fairs in Germany and beyond? See the website of the Association of the German Trade Fair Industry: www.auma.de  

For advice, information and support to help you get the most out of the right German trade fair for you contact Eureko

Posted: 29th January 2018

Tapping into the huge German automotive sector

With a turnover approaching £400 billion, the automotive sector in Germany is huge and wide reaching. One in every five cars sold across the world carries a German brand.

Germany’s commercial vehicle manufacturers for van, truck, trailer, body and bus are among Europe’s market leaders.The headquarters of many international automotive sector companies are based in Germany. Any business in the automotive component or parts supply business needs to seriously consider how to connect to Germany effectively.

Germany Trade & Invest reports: “Germany’s high concentration of auto-related R&D, design, supply, manufacturing and assembly facilities makes it possible for companies to successfully partner across the whole value chain. It also explains why recent studies see the German automotive industry outperforming other countries when it comes to innovative power, product quality and productivity.”

Germany really is different

The vast majority of businesses in Germany in the automotive sector are privately owned SMEs. These companies often provide world class quality and service within a niche market worldwide. They can - and do - take a long term view.

Vivien Hacker, Eureko MD, says: “Germany does things differently. The market structure in the automotive sector is very different to the UK and the people you want to do business with have got forensic knowledge of their own markets, competitors and suppliers.” New and stronger links with German companies in the automotive sector can provide the opportunity to reach seamlessly into the German market – and also into markets across Europe.

What can Eureko offer you?

Eureko has worked extensively developing export links from the UK into the automotive sector in Germany. The team knows how the industry works and it has built up a wide range of contacts in this sector in Germany. One example of this know-how is the globally successful brand Checkpoint®.  To find out more our work with this innovative company: see this overview 

With our in-depth experience of the German automotive sector we can work with you to identify the right opportunities for you. Our bilingual international trade specialists can provide the research, negotiation, sales and marketing skills that your business needs to succeed.

For hands-on help with exporting to the automotive sector contact Eureko

Posted: 20th November 2017

Negotiating with Europeans may be harder than expected

Do not underestimate our continental cousins. As we have already seen several times in the Brexit negotiations - what they may lack in subtle and confusing use of the English language, bluster and blind optimism - they more than make up for in preparation and planning, plain speaking and focus. 

 Divided by a common language?

Many Europeans speak very good European English indeed. This is very similar to native English but typically lacks the nuances and subtleties that many British people routinely use to communicate among themselves.

For example if a native English speaker says that they find a proposal ‘interesting’ it is perhaps possible that they actually find it interesting. More likely they are politely telling their opposite number to go away and think of something better.

The European English speaking colleague may assume that they actually do find it interesting.

Failing to prepare means preparing to fail

If the Brexit negotiations teach us anything useful so far, it is perhaps the importance of being thoroughly prepared…

This includes:

- Not underestimating the negotiating skills of the other side. 

- Knowing your own clear objectives. 

- Being particularly clear on any ‘red lines’.

- Anticipating your opposite number’s key issues.

Understanding German market opportunities in depth - and how these could dovetail with your organisation’s unique products and capabilities - are key to developing a successful approach to negotiating new business.

How could Eureko’s support work for you? 

Access to your own bilingual German trade specialist - our highly experienced German trade specialists have experience of negotiating with Germans at senior level. They can work with you to get to grips with your business needs - and the real opportunities for your business in Germany now.

Tailored support to match your requirements – one of Eureko’s German Trade Specialists can work with you to help you make the very most of export opportunities to Germany.

For hands-on help with negotiating with Germany contact Eureko

Posted: 5th November 2017

A local perspective - seeing Morecambe anew

On 31st August I went along to The Platform in Morecambe with a group of friends. The venue was absolutely packed. The event was simply called “Morecambe on film” and consisted of 9 short documentary films going back to the beginning of the 20th Century.

 You could hear and see the reaction of the audience to old pictures of the Winter Gardens, the piers, Heysham Head, and the promenade with the beach, to name but a few of the instantly recognisable locations.

The audience – a mix of people coming from the area but also as far away as Italy – were engaged, animatedly talking about the places then and now, and most tellingly getting emotionally involved in the short films.

I first moved from Germany to the area in 1998. I remember thinking that Morecambe must have seen better days, and when talking to locals I sensed that the town was not enjoying the best possible reputation.

Over the past two decades I genuinely believe that things have changed a great deal. For the better.

We now appreciate that Morecambe has had its heyday as a popular seaside resort for the people of Lancashire and Yorkshire (and beyond), and the images of people thronging the promenade, the beaches and the resort’s attractions as shown in the films belong firmly to the past. But pride in the old resort and a growing pride in today’s Morecambe could be felt all around the packed Platform.

Our Chamber is already building on the energies contained in that pride in and identification with the place - to attract new tourists and visitors to the resort from much further afield than Yorkshire and Lancashire.

The past provides a source of identity but how can we best nourish that nostalgia - for the present and the future?

This article features in Chamber Chat with Lancaster and District Chamber of Commerce

For hands-on help with exporting contact Eureko

Posted: 29th September 2017

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 MD, Vivien Hacker, 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.

Need help to handle incoming German enquiries and orders? We can manage phone, website enquiry form or email contact direct from Germany for you.

For hands-on help with .de website creation and implementation 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 Directors and Associates offer 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. We can also deal - on your behalf - with all enquiries, orders and negotiations in German, while keeping you fully informed.

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

For hands on help or advice with exporting to Germany contact Eureko

Posted: 20th July 2017

A local perspective - where business meets community

Last week I was returning from giving a presentation to the sales force of a German company on behalf of one of my UK clients.

Sitting in a small plane making the short journey from Paderborn to Munich I got into conversation with a fellow German lady who frequently flies.

She had noticed on our flight just how friendly the service was, whereas on the much bigger planes crews were so harried and consequently passengers felt treated in a much more impersonal way.

 It set me thinking about business and behaviour in our global world, especially when I arrived back in Bare, North Morecambe. It has its own busy little station, and between there and the wonderfully renewed promenade there are some 40 businesses. These include a couple of pubs, two cafes, a newsagent, a post office, a pharmacy and most recently a popular micropub.

During the week Princes Crescent, where most of these businesses (and many more besides) are concentrated, is a hive of activity, a meeting point for an entire local community, where customers are treated civilly, with respect and in a visibly personal manner. Just as the fellow passenger on the short leg of the return journey had described her own experiences.

Bare’s shops and pubs and different agencies is a very good model for the whole region of how business can flourish and be part of a genuine community. And,interestingly, in an area that for a long time has an ageing population, there is a growing cross-section of society who now frequent the area. In other words, Bare is adapting quite organically to a changing world, just as other business districts have to.

Bare represents an exemplary microcosm of how businesses and communities can fruitfully co-exist.

This article features in Chamber Chat with Lancaster and District Chamber of Commerce

For hands-on help with exporting, contact Eureko

Posted: 31st May 2017

Finding your trade fair route into the huge German environmental market

Climate change has created a genuine mood for change within businesses in Germany. The German government is heavily committed to taking significant action to reduce emissions over the coming years and decades.

This provides real opportunities for UK firms to sell to Germany.

German trade fairs are the key events of the year in their sector

A presence at one of the key trade fairs can instantly raise your organisation’s profile with potential customers and provide a unique chance to get under the skin of the sector. 

 German businesses take trade fairs very seriously. The environmental sector with its huge growth potential is no different.

Trade fairs provide an ideal opportunity for useful research in a growing market.

- Get to grips with supply chains and competitors.

- Establish future relationships with new potential customers.

Here are just some of the trade fairs that could be right for your business:

For details of the wide range of regional and international trade fairs in Germany see www.auma.de

For hands-on help with selecting, visiting - and exhibiting at - German trade fairs contact Eureko

Posted: 24th May 2017

Germany means business on the environment

The environmental sector offers significant opportunities in Germany now - for energy efficient, sustainable products and services - and for new ways of doing things.

In Germany, awareness of the issues facing the environment is high across the political spectrum. Germany remains at the forefront of planning to address climate change. The hesitancies of Donald Trump’s United States over protecting the environment do not affect this commitment.

Germany is planning to take real action in real time...

This will impact on individuals and organisations across Germany. It means a whole new raft of export opportunities arising now and into the future for the UK.

For British businesses with products and services that support increased energy efficiency this is good news.

The transition to sustainable energy is underway in your sector now

Germany has long been leading the world in the development of renewable energy and environmental technology. This ‘Energiewende’ (changing energy policy) began in Germany, with politicians across the spectrum committed to it. The current commitment is to be largely greenhouse gas neutral by 2050.

Germany is moving towards these targets right now. In November 2016, the German government adopted Climate Action Plan 2050. A significant change was the new sector-specific ‘corridors’ for reductions in emissions by 2030 compared with 1990.

Federal Environment Minister, Barbara Hendricks, said: “For the first time we have defined target ranges for individual sectors… no one can fool themselves into thinking that climate change only affects others.”

Opportunities for tomorrow’s solutions today...

 This clear plan means that across the board, German businesses are taking action to meet these targets and ensure their own survival.

The sector target ‘corridors’ for reductions in greenhouse gases vary - but in many cases they will mean a drastic transformation in the way things are done.

 Manufacturing industry has to meet a target emissions reduction of around 50% by 2030 compared with 1990 - which means an increasing focus now on energy efficiency, R&D and introducing new technologies and approaches.

The transport sector sees a target reduction range of around 40% by 2030 - with a range of measures anticipated - including increased efficiency, alternative power sources, more public transport, cycling and walking and increased use of digital technology.

The typical long life of buildings means that to meet the longer term cuts for 2050, the buildings of 2030 now have a two-thirds reduction target for emissions. How? Very ambitious standards for new buildings and renovation - and the phasing out of heating systems based on fossil fuels.
These changes all mean significant opportunities for UK businesses.

For further useful and detailed information on this subject see cleanenergywire.org

For hands-on help with exporting products that can provide environmental benefits to Germany contact Eureko

Posted: 3rd May 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 Managing Director, Vivien Hacker, 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.”

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

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!”

Interested in finding out more?

Eureko offers a personal hands-on service to any kind of small to medium business operating in any commercial and industrial sector across the UK to help them export their products or services to German-speaking Europe.

If you are interested in doing business in Germany, get in touch today for an initial discussion on how we could help: v.hacker@eureko.co.uk or phone us on 01524 420661.

Posted: 9th March 2017

Why Germany is still the land of opportunity - for doing business...

The vast majority of businesses in Germany are privately owned SMEs. These ‘Mittelstand’ companies often aim for - and achieve - world class quality and service within a niche market worldwide.

Many of these companies are themselves extremely export-orientated and focused on specialist products with high value-added. They are in the powerful position of being able to take a long term view due to the way they are funded and managed.

This long term approach and stability provides the foundation for much of Germany’s continuing economic success. 

International trade is the lifeblood of Germany

A significant proportion of German exports include a range of imported components… your exports to Germany could easily form part of Germany’s exports to the world.

According to The WTO - over 40% of German GDP is from international trade compared with just over a fifth for China and less than a sixth for the U.S.

World Trade Organisation country ranking figures for product sales (2013-2015) make interesting reading… U.S. 1st for imports, 2nd for exports; China 2nd for imports, 1st for exports; Germany 3rd for imports, 3rd for exports; UK 9th for exports, 5th for imports.

With Germany’s economy so heavily dependent on exporting and importing it is the natural first choice for an export campaign from the U.K. for both component suppliers and others. 

German home market is the biggest in Europe – and growing

Germany is by far the leading trading country in the continent in terms of volume and value. With a largely very prosperous population of around 82 million, the German economy remains one of the most outstanding economies in the world. It is only a few hundred miles from the UK – and it has been forecast to grow at around 1.5% each year over the next 20 years.

Finding the right opportunities for doing business in Germany

German imports were valued at more than £700,000,000,000 in 2015.  Germany is the priority export market for many successful UK companies. It offers many potential routes to support your organisation’s success.

Your products could be destined for the German home market – or to be component parts - ultimately heading on towards German firms’ thriving export markets.

Interested in finding the right opportunities for your business in Germany?

For hands-on help with marketing and selling to Germany simply contact Eureko

Posted: 15th February 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 over ten years, 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, don't hesitate to contact us.

Posted: 19th January 2017

Ringing the bells for local pride

In German they call it “Lokalpatriotismus”. Literally translated that’s local patriotism. In other words, the term expresses how strongly we feel rooted in our own area and how passionately we want the best for the place where we live...

At the beginning of a New Year it’s important to start with what we have in front of our very own eyes. When I travel along the Morecambe road from where I live in Bare towards Lancaster, the whole district suddenly opens up ahead of me as I approach the magnificent junction with the Bay Gateway. Everything is visible: the Ashton Memorial, the castle, the priory, but also the links to the more modern world of motorways and ports. The completion of the bypass road has helped to open up impressive new perspectives on the whole bay area.

The Chamber has been lobbying for such an important piece of infrastructure to bring the whole area together for decades now. And that’s precisely one of the meanings of ‘local patriotism’, namely to feel so well disposed to where one lives and works and enjoys one’s leisure time, that one wants to make one’s own contribution to it.

The Italians have their own vivid and literally concrete expression for this notion, too, and it’s based around the word meaning “bell tower”: “campanilismo”. The locality in that sense is that district where the sound of bells from the tower can be distinctly heard and gives everybody within the sight and sound of the tower a symbolic yet strong sense of who they are, where they belong and what values they share in common.

So let’s ring our district’s bells as good, local patriots with a deep belief in the future of our community.

This article features in Chamber Chat with The Chamber North Lancashire

For hands-on help with exporting, contact Eureko.

Posted: 12th 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.

By Tony Waine, International Trade Director for Eureko. 

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Posted: 20th May 2016

A decade of Anglo-German Collaboration

At the beginning of 2006 Eureko’s founder and MD, Vivien Hacker, was introduced by a UKTI international trade advisor, to Mike Marczynski. He was looking for someone to carry out some market research into the German heavy goods vehicle sector. The trade advisor, Andrew Fawcett, had already brought Vivien to the attention of a number of companies in the region (Cumbria and North Lancashire) sensing that she could be useful in helping them to make progress in Germany, which - then as now - is Britain’s biggest European trading partner.

Vivien’s first hand knowledge of the German business mentality and culture – she was born and raised in Frankfurt am Main – plus her fluent command of English, quickly impressed Mike. A good fifteen years earlier, in the early 1990s, he had invented and developed a unique safety product, called the Checkpoint, which is fitted on the wheel nuts of HGVs in order to indicate to drivers and fleet maintenance teams if a wheel nut is in danger of coming loose – with unimaginable consequences. He had already made the breakthrough in the UK market and now he wanted to set about tackling the continental European markets with the help of native speakers like Vivien Hacker.

Now in 2016 Checkpoint are firmly established in the German-speaking markets, and thanks to his international sales team Mike’s company export successfully all over the world.

So, in January this year Vivien’s Eureko and Mike’s Checkpoint, whose global headquarters are based in Carnforth, Lancashire, enjoyed a glass of champagne and some delicious German and Austrian cakes to mark the export successes notched up in Europe’s powerhouse economy by the cooperation between the two companies.

So, to re-phrase a familiar German slogan:

VORSPRUNG DURCH EUROPÄISCHE ZUSAMMENARBEIT!

Or

TAKING THE LEAD THROUGH EUROPEAN TEAMWORK!

Prost! And Cheers! To another ten years …

Posted: 26th April 2016

Learning a foreign language opens up the world

Learning a foreign language opens up the world in a quite dramatic way. Alexandra Wood recently graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in French and German and is presently an intern in the European Commission in Brussels. She meets people from all over Europe on a daily basis and her experience has taught her how “learning a language is really about getting to know other people and other cultures better. You actually learn to see the world in a different way.” To see the world through the eyes of another person by speaking a different language can be a wonderfully enlightening personal experience for any of us. We actually do then see many more similarities between us and them – and far fewer differences!

That view is certainly shared by Daniela Flint, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Human Growth and Development at Lancaster and Morecambe College. She has also taught German for over 25 years in the region. She is convinced that knowing and using other languages “helps prevent our segregation and isolation from other people, as well as widening our horizons and helping us connect with people on a different level.” She’s also seen how “communicating with others, playing with new and unfamiliar words (and making mistakes!)” provides fun and enjoyment for people well into their eighties.

So far I’ve been emphasising the psychological and cultural benefits of being equipped, even at a fairly basic level, with an understanding of a foreign language. A more sophisticated knowledge of any foreign language in today’s international workplace “gives a person many skills such as gathering information, assessing and interpreting it, leading discussions and developing opinions, all skills that employers value more and more.” That’s the firm view of Dr Birgit Smith, Head of the Department of European Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University. She and her department have helped thousands of students find rewarding work in today’s international world. We could all benefit from retaining more of these multi-skilled graduates in our own region.

This article is part of the Chamber Chat series published in the Lancaster Guardian.

Posted: 23rd February 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

For free hints and tips to help you export, follow us @EurekoExport

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.

By Tony Waine

Follow Eureko on Twitter: @EurekoExport

Posted: 5th January 2016

Eureko gets region's businesses into Berlin

This article featured in October 2015 in In The Bay.

A Morecambe-based research company is helping the region’s small and medium sized enterprises branch out and reach international markets.

Eureko, which is celebrating its twelfth anniversary today, has helped SMEs discover potential customers in German-speaking markets across Europe.

The company handles all incoming German-language mail, calls and documentation, and utilises business channels and contacts across Germany to raise awareness of products.

Eureko also develop new slogans, write features magazines and oversees search engine optimisation on websites - all targeted at German-language markets.

The company’s managing director, Vivien Hacker is originally from Germany and came to the UK as part of a programme to help improve links between Britain and his home country.

Mrs Hacker created the company after working at Lancaster University for five years, teaching German language and culture and helping students to understand the country better and it was here that the idea for Eureko was formed.

Describing how she landed on the idea for Eureko, Mrs Hacker explained how working in the UK lead to the development of the business.

She said: “I knew the German mentality, I had got to know and really like the British mentality – tolerant, quirky and pragmatic – and so I founded a company that would link up business communities in my native country with business communities in the north of England. “I knew from working here for 5 years before founding the company that the British are really inventive and creative, both in their services sector as well as manufacturing things.

“What was often missing though from the equation was a knowledge of foreign languages and of a feeling for foreign ‘ways’, i.e. different customs and traditions. My company would provide exactly those kinds of services.”

Mrs Hacker has also joined the board of directors at Lancaster District Chamber of Commerce and will help the Chamber’s members reach out into new markets.

The managing director said: “My brief is to not only support the Chamber’s work on behalf of the region, but to encourage us here in the Lancaster and Morecambe District to think internationally, to think exports.

“So to kick start this internationalisation process, we’re establishing contacts in the EU with our opposite numbers, the Chambers of Commerce in countries like Germany and Poland, starting with our twinned towns there.”

After 12 years in business, Eureko has been developing relationships across The Bay and for the past decade it has worked with Carnforth-based manufacturing company, Checkpoint, which is responsible for millions of international exports each year.

“A few years ago I helped Checkpoint win an order from MAN for two million pieces. With 20 per cent of all the lorries on British roads made by this German giant, it’s an amazing achievement to supply them directly in Munich.

“Lancashire knows how to do it - its businesses have the products, and it just requires a bit more self-belief to go out into Europe’s premier market and to sell to them on their own ground and crucially in their own language.”

Posted: 18th November 2015

"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.

Need further convincing? Take a look at these costly translation mistakes!

Alex Wood works as an International Trade Associate for Eureko giving hands-on help with exporting. Follow us @EurekoExport to find out how we can help your small business grow through exports.

Posted: 19th September 2015

On the German Business Pitch

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.

Eureko: Hands-on help with exporting to Germany

Posted: 28th June 2015

How to keep your business healthy

According to a recent study by the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC), small and medium-sized businesses in the UK have finally recovered from the recession - jobs, growth and start-up activity are back at pre-2008 levels. This is great news for the British economy. However, some economists warn that the economy is still fragile, so how can you help to ensure your business stays healthy in the long-term? The answer is simple: export. 

Why export?

Being bound to the domestic market alone is risky. Selling abroad can reduce the risk of exposure to fluctuations in local business cycles. By selling to other countries, the risk of a low growth rate in one market will be offset by increased growth in another resulting in a healthy balance of growth overall. It should be said, that it is important to establish your business in the UK market before exporting. Once you have done this, exporting is certainly an option to consider as a way of increasing your sales potential, productivity and profitability.

It doesn’t have to be complicated

Exporting can be as simple as selling your goods or services internationally via your website, or using the services of a distributor who buys your products and then sells them to their customers. Each company has different needs so it is important to understand the factors that affect your business. For this, Eureko can help.

Eureko specialises in helping SMEs to export to Europe’s largest market, Germany. As a consultancy company, our services are economical and tailored to your needs. With over ten years of experience working with companies at all different stages of exporting, we can give you the hands-on help you need to grow your business. For more information on how your business can make the most of export opportunities to stay healthy, contact Eureko.

Posted: 24th 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.

Translation: more than just words

Translation is often confused with what Google translate does: swapping words from one language into another. Although online tools can be somewhat useful for getting the gist of a foreign text, they are poor at including all of the cultural aspects that are a fundamental part of language. Professional (human!) translators, however, are trained to turn a text into a clear and country-appropriate equivalent of the original text that reads as though it was never translated. This new text takes account of the client’s business philosophy and who the target audience is. In short, translation is about more than just words.

Localisation

But why is it important that your marketing is culturally appropriate? Well, to take a silly example, if you’re trying to market your umbrellas with a cats and dogs motif to Germans using the slogan “For when it’s raining cats and dogs” this would just confuse the Germans as they don’t have the same expression. When exporting, in order to be able to sell your product or service abroad successfully, it is vital that you don’t just translate the words but ensure the language you use is adapted to local needs. This is called localisation.

Isn't English a world language?

Posted: 28th April 2015

Let's take our skills to a world market

A global village

Back in the Sixties a phrase was coined about seeing the world as a “global village”. Over the past 50 years that perception has become more and more a reality and less and less a slogan. Holidays abroad are the norm for the majority of us. We’ve changed our eating patterns and tastes and enjoy going to restaurants that give us the flavour and atmosphere of a different country and its culture. We watch television programmes and films that transport us to exotic parts of the world and entertain us with stories about how differently and interestingly people live in other parts of the world.

What I’ve been saying about the British applies to people who live in other countries too. Whenever I travel abroad, I’m always astonished by the interest, and frequently fascination, that other countries show about our way of life, our institutions, and our history. They’re very knowledgeable about Britain and genuinely impressed by all the things that we have produced over the centuries, right through to the Harry Potter phenomenon!

 Taking the leap

Such interest is a spur to all local and regional businesses that have been developing a particular product or a particular type of service and have sold their goods to a domestic market. I agree it’s not easy to make that big leap into a rather unknown and unfamiliar world beyond our shores, and to believe that a successful domestic product could be turned into an even more successful and profitable export product.

However, it’s certainly worth a go. And you don’t have to do it on your own. Over roughly the past 10 years British organisations, including of course the government, have been working harder than ever before to cater for every type of business at every level of commerce and industry in order to equip businesses for taking their product to a foreign market place and successfully selling it there. The most important agency for providing such assistance is called UK Trade & Investment or UKTI for short. Because it is a government arm, it effectively has a network of organisations in every major city and town throughout the world where Britain is represented. Crucially though, you can make a start on thinking about exports much closer to home, by getting in touch with the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce where you’ll be given advice, information and practical help concerning the bread and butter issues of doing trade internationally.

Thinking internationally

On our doorstep we have a university which is proud of its international outreach and credentials. There is no reason at all why our entire North Lancashire trading region cannot be inspired to think along international lines by having confidence in our design skills, our technological know-how and in our entrepreneurial drive and to help supplant the Germans – my fellow countrymen – as the “export world champions” of Europe. Just to return to the Sixties with which I introduced my article, let’s also be inspired by Wembley and the spirit of 1966!

For hands-on help with exporting, contact Eureko.

This article is part of the Chamber Chat series published in the Lancaster Guardian.

Posted: 8th March 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.

The Eureko team

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