But, truth be told, my preteen life was showing signs of hope. I’d moved up in the world, no longer confined to the “retard room” with a thick stack of gray tracing paper, a gum-slapping aide and a hydroencephalitic boy who drooled constantly. In fact, I’d been placed into a gifted program, where I was instead encouraged to dream up inventions, classify rocks, and attempt socializing with a few other “special” youngsters. I was also scribbling poems, reams of them, for in-class recitation. Still, I was a gangly, left-handed thumb-sucker and a behavioral nightmare from a broken, chaotic home in an isolated town. I was also attempting to compensate, in the worst ways possible, for a learning hurdle which was initially known as “she can’t write” and much later revealed to me as “a form of dyslexia.” No way would I ever go to college. No way would I learn Chinese.

In 2010, most of us hopefully know that those who are labeled learning-disabled or behaviorally challenged- whether it be autism, ADHD, dyslexia, OCD, etc.- aren’t necessarily “dummies” or “disabled” at all. In many cases, it’s just the opposite. For instance, one family relative of mine has Aspergers, and while he may not be able to hold down a good job or lengthy conversation at this point in his life (although I believe otherwise), he can take apart your entire computer and put it back together again with incredible speed. He is, by some measures, a genius. So, it is 2010, and we are evolved, aware human beings now, right? Back in the late 1980s, not so much.

High school, as the saying goes, was torture. By eleventh grade I was batting straight Fs, earned the most in-school suspensions in my class, and had already enjoyed a vacation at a boot camp for troubled youth. Things quickly went from bad to worse. By senior year, I’d been kicked out of my father’s house and was informed quite directly that I would likely not graduate with my class- or at all…
It took one random person to believe otherwise- a retired teacher who single-handedly pulled me toward that diploma- and my life began to turn around. Under his tutelage, I developed new systems of learning in the quiet of a library while being encouraged to focus less on my shortcomings and more on my strengths. Against the odds, I graduated with my high school class while living independent of my parents and working full-time. Still, college was definitely not happening. And Chinese? I’d probably have better luck digging a hole to Beijing.

As life would have it, I made it to college- albeit a few years later than some of my peers and not without bumps along the way- excelling across the board while working as a bartender and writing tutor in Manhattan. The irony. It was in college, at a public university, that I decided to give the “Ivy-league only” Mandarin Chinese a try- a language that had appealed to me as kaleidoscopic symphony, an opera of angles and lines. And, much like the poetry I had grown up reading and reciting, Mandarin felt instantly right. It calmed anxieties, fueled curiosity and, within my personal framework of learning, made perfect sense. Sure, Mandarin was very difficult for me- I’m still struggling to learn it. But, I could never say the same about French. French was impossible. Eventually, I made the move to China and then, to grad school. In Mandarin, as in poetry, I had finally found my own path through memory, cadence and tone. Through the rhythm of a character.

Much like other common learning disabilities, dyslexics are visual thinkers who have a unique relationship to sound and an ability to perceive using all of the senses. Right-brained people in general are known to be visual-spatial learners- unfortunately, they are also the ones who most frequently live with negative labels attached to their minds. It is also often said that dyslexics have great difficulty processing language. But, if you consider it another way, that assumption would have to depend solely on the context in which “language” is defined. For instance, if language is conveyed in rhythm and metaphor- like it is in Dickinson’s “Hope is a Thing of Feathers,”- a dyslexic or other learning-disabled person may come away with a very rich and uncommon understanding of the poem itself. I would also argue that the same applies with Chinese- a language revealed in a series of logographs, delivered like a poem or a song.

If it wasn’t for that retired high-school teacher who had encouraged the exploration of possibility instead of insisting that I be and do like everyone else, I probably never would have made it to college. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn’t have made it to thirty. And, if it wasn’t for gravitating toward two unlikely subjects- Mandarin and poetry- I certainly wouldn’t have continued on to China, to grad school and… at some point in the future… hopefully…a doctorate. I love learning now. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this narrative a lot- it is one that has managed to define my life before, now, and after. In doing so, I often find myself considering the kids out there today who, even in 2010, may find themselves living under names like “learning disabled” or “special” or “dumb” or “crazy” or “hopeless.” Where will they end up? Will they all be as fortunate as I have been?

It is more than apparent that we need to boost our Mandarin programs in this country. But, who are the BEST candidates to actually grasp the language and stick with it? Is it the so-called Ivy League-bound Einsteins hidden away at $40,000 a year prep schools? Or, the overachieving math whizzes in Sucktown, USA? Or, could it be the kid with Aspergers or dyslexia or autism- the kid who thinks in pictures and remembers in pitch? I don’t have the answer, nor could I find a single study examining the correlation between right-brained, so-called learning disabled individuals and their ability to comprehend Mandarin or at least, their ability to like studying it (the second point- to like Mandarin- is very important). What if we threw those kids a few Chinese characters instead of simplifying their options both in school and in life? What if we gave it a shot, the old college try? What if we’re confusing ineptitude with aptitude?

Who knows what’s possible?

__________________________________________
Update 2/2/10

There appears to be some promise to my tentative conclusion. Check out this study from 1971, “American Children with Reading Problems Can Easily Learn to Read English Represented by Chinese Characters”. It is, however, the only concrete research that I’ve been able to find so far. Dissertation, anyone?

by Greg T. Spielberg

Come the first day of school, roughly 600 Oakland County (Mich.) students will be tossing Chinese textbooks into their backpacks on the way to class. Over the past two years, the number of high schools offering Chinese has jumped from four to 23 out of the 28 districts in this Detroit-metro county. Seventh-grade social studies has been refocused from Eastern Hemisphere to contemporary China and “its emerging role in the world,” says Jackie Moase-Burke, the language consultant for Oakland Schools. These students are part of the growing number nationwide – from Chicago and Ohio to Washington D.C. and New Jersey – that should be able to translate “Welcome back to school” to “欢迎回到学校” by year’s end.

There are an estimated 50,000 Chinese-language students in the United States according to the Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages Web site, a tenfold increase since 2000. In Oakland County, educators and local government are working together to promote a bi-lingual school experience – one that better positions students to interact with the world’s largest emerging market. “More and more, education and workforce development has been critical to business development,” says Chuck Holmes of the Oakland County Department of Economic Development.

The trend is not just in southeast Michigan. It’s nationwide. “There has been a sea change,” says Steve Ackley, spokesman for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Nationally, Chinese programs in the US saw heavy growth, increasing 200% between ’04 and ’08. Nine years ago, the group’s national survey of America’s schools did not even include Chinese as an answer option (the language was part of “other.”) The council estimates that 5000 schools taught the language.

This significant uptick has been aided by China’s flourishing economic gravity, but also through assistance by both nation’s governments. In 2006, President Bush kicked off the $114 million National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), a program meant to increase America’s fluency in “critical” languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Russian and others. The NSLI provided funding for students seeking to learn strategically important languages, and with international relations dominated by the Middle East, Arabic was the overwhelmingly popular choice.

Thomas Farrell, former secretary of the State Department’s academic programs, says the fund (which also provides grants for teachers) was influenced by changing global economics as well. “I do think the impact that we were all experiencing – China’s economic impact and India’s economic rise – had a lot to do with the initiative.”

Since then, Chinese has greatly outstripped Arabic as America’s second language. A major reason for the speed with which Chinese is moving across the continent is Hanban, or the Chinese Language Council International. Officially defined as a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, Hanban is financed by the state and in turn has sponsored a noticeable portion of the States’ language renaissance. Chinese Language Council International sponsors trips for American teachers and administrators to visit China, pays for Chinese textbooks and finds Chinese teachers for American schools having trouble pulling a qualified instructor from the local area. Hanban also funds teacher-training programs for non-native speakers looking to sharpen their fluency.

Ackley, who’s attended the World Language Expo for the past half-decade says he started noticing the Hanban presence three years ago. The cultural promotion is part of a soft diplomacy meant to increase the country’s influence abroad. China recently began broadcasting its China Central Television satellite channel into the Middle East and seeks to do the same in the US.

In domestic public and private schools, Hanban is influencing Chinese-language teaching. More than 35 of the 350 or so private schools in the country source the group to find them qualified teachers through a program called China Connection. A Birmingham, Ala., school wanted to start an Associated Placement program but lacked the talent base (only 1% of the city’s population is Asian, much less Chinese).

“The program really allowed the school to begin where they may not have been able to otherwise,” says National Association of Public Schools Spokeswoman Myra McGovern, adding that less than a tenth of America’s private schools relied on Hanban to find teachers.

Galal Walker, director of the National East Asian Languages Resources Center at Ohio State University, manages his relationship with Hanban “tenderly.” The center’s mission is to bring Chinese language teaching into the mainstream but Walker says Hanban has frequently bordered on proselytizing for its country rather than helping to properly instruct Ohio students. He credits Hanban for becoming more efficient, pointing out that the relationship is a work in progress. For the state, there’s been rapid development. Five years ago, Ohio had seven schools teaching Chinese. Now there are 70 districts with more than 100 schools.

Proselytizing or efficient management, the results are starting to become apparent to Walker. “I spent 25 years saying we should pay attention to the Chinese, and now I sit in my office and get 25 calls from people who say we should be paying attention to the Chinese,” he says.

Many thanks to Greg T. Spielberg for contributing this article. Greg is fresh off an eight-month internship at BusinessWeek where he worked on reader engagement and as a reporter. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Missouri. His journalism passions are building community and writing about the economic implications of cultural change.

You’re a veteran translator with some pretty big names under your belt including McKinsey, the Economist, and HSBC.  You’re now working as a linguistic consultant and partner at Handsome Translations.  Tell me a little bit about the business.
We are a translation service headquartered in Shanghai. From our mainland China offices and Hong Kong as well as overseas footprints, we help international corporations keep abreast of China’s fast-growing economy and make informed business decisions by breaking down the language barrier. Likewise, we are helping internationally aspiring Chinese enterprises communicate with their prospects and partners overseas in pursuit of their business opportunities.

The name, Handsome Translations, is fantastic!  How did you come up with it?
The naming process involved some brief brainstorming, with a primary focus on the power to convey our belief that business-oriented translations, like most other streams of this old practice, should always be effective in a business-like manner to produce a positive impact. That’s why sometimes we go a little bit out of the way to prompt/help the client to improve on the working of their original draft in the source language, based on our prior experience with the corresponding type of business communication. There is a pun in the name that exactly reinforces that kind of impact we emphasize.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics increased the demand for Chinese-English translation services tremendously.  Has this trend continued, despite the current economy?
I haven’t observed a reversal in the trend. After all, the Olympics occurred roughly 30 years after China started reaching out to the global village from a closed economy and society. The mutual curiosity on both sides of the language and cultural barriers is part of human nature. The corporations we focus on are no exception. These are driven by brains that are sharp enough but undoubtedly follow the same kind of curiosity, more often than not, when it comes to leads and opportunities overseas. Curiosity kills the cat, yet it feeds the translator.

Tell me a little bit about your clientele.  Are you working primarily with companies in the West who need English translated to Chinese or are you focusing more on China-based industries?
Geographically speaking, 70 percent of our clients are based in China, and the rest are overseas entities. If we look at the origin of the businesses, then the split would be something like 40-60 (Chinese funded firms vs. foreign funded ones).

Aside from translation and interpretation, you also specialize in foreign language service project management.  What does that entail?
We acted on a small number cases as interim project manager for companies new to the China market with an initial lack of experience and resources to manage their bilingual or multilingual corporate communications.

It’s been predicted that China will soon become the largest English speaking country in the world.  Based on what you’ve seen, is this an accurate assumption? China might already be the world’s largest or second largest country in terms of people enrolled in its mandatory English language programs in the education system, but when it comes to using English as a working language, I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon.

More and more Chinese are becoming fluent in English.  Despite this, would you advise English speakers to gain a good grasp of Mandarin if they’re looking to do business in China?  Also, how relevant is Cantonese at this point?
If you can afford the time, I would say a good command of your business counterpart’s native language would always put you in an advantage over your rivals because that knowledge naturally draws you and your Chinese partner closer. It is a universal human reaction in interpersonal relationships. Even if good proficiency is not possible, on the other hand, some survival Chinese would save you a lot of trouble in private life when you are in the country. Cantonese as a dialect is gradually losing the kind of prominence it enjoyed say 20+ years ago. In addition, the catching up of the mainland economy, closer ties and more frequent travel between the SAR and the mainland have given rise to a popularity of Mandarin study among Hong Kong natives. I should say the Mandarin proficiency of Hong Kong intellectuals has picked up significantly in comparison to Guangdong mainlanders, who read and write Mandarin fluently but still habitually shun it in speech in favor of Cantonese.

I was speaking to a guy from Brooklyn, New York the other day and could hardly understand a word he was saying- it was all slang!  Similarly, while collaborating with a team from IBM, I sometimes had a difficult time keeping up with the conversation on account of all the acronyms they use.  In your work, do you ever run into this type of issue?  How do you stay on top of slang, nuances, and specialized corporate lingo?
Yes, we come across a lot of them. The short answer is to know your customer by the business they practice. Luckily, my colleagues and I benefit from years of in-house corporate translation work shoulder by shoulder with seasoned business executives in a variety of domains areas, where obsessive jargons and acronyms were and are the norm. From their standpoint, it is a natural human and corporate instinct to resort to such internal conventions to save time in speech and writing. In a translatable text of a desirable length, the context often provides the translator some clues to what the expression in issue means. So often times you can at least derive a couple of “educated guesses” of what it is driving at (education by context). Where there is still a lot of uncertainty despite industry-specific resources and reasoning, or, for domain areas totally new to you, consider using the client as the last resort.  Of course, this is not an encouragement to shoot questions like a machine gun. Be systematic. When there is a large number of queries to make, prepare a list to save time on both sides. Often times, your client would be glad that you asked.
In interpretation work to and from Chinese, slang is less of a problem compared with dialects. I don’t think the issue of dialect is as prominent in English as in Chinese. But in either case, don’t be too shy to ask the speaker to slow down or repeat/paraphrase what he/she said. Used artfully, this actually often serves as a hint that a more formal wording pattern/accent (Mandarin when it comes to Chinese) should probably be adopted.

What types of industries are on the hunt for English-Chinese translation these days?  Similarly, what trends have you seen over the past six months?
Virtually any type of business might run into an urgent need of a translator/interpreter all of a sudden. However, we have witnessed an increased interest in translation services from IT hardware and software providers and green energy ventures, among other technology-oriented sectors. A nuance to note is that some active demand for the service is being subdued to a passive translation need when the economy is in a condition like this.

Much of the world places acquiring fluency in multiple languages as a high priority.  In the U.S., however, very little emphasis is placed on the importance of being multilingual.  In an increasingly globalized world, do you think that will change?
I think globally-minded people in the US are increasingly seeing the importance of the multilingual capacity. The Monterey Institute of International Studies in the US, for one, as a pioneer in degree-oriented language programs, has stepped up its recruitment efforts for some “strategic languages” it offers. This could be a sign of increased emphasis in the US on developing a reservoir of foreign language talents.

Handsome Translations is approaching its two-year mark.  What types of clients/projects are you pursuing now and what are you looking forward to in 2009?
We are putting more focus on small and medium-sized customers at home and abroad, since the entrepreneurship they embody is going to be the engine of our economies. A break through the language barrier, with the assistance of a translation service, could create remarkable growth opportunities.

There are many translation services available these days.  What sets Handsome Translations apart from the competition?
We focus on business domains that we know. We also concentrate on economic and industrial trends.  We try our best to perceive the market’s needs of language service with a personalized touch and try to avoid generalization based on peer experience/practices.

If I am a business in need of your services, how can I get in touch with you?
The best way to reach us is by email at: handsomeservices@gmail.com
You can also reach me directly on Linkedin at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaoyi
Additionally, I am personally available by MSN: xiaoyi1999@yahoo.com
Skype: tiptoe-on-you
Phone: +86 28 88193927

Thanks, Yi!