Conferences

Intercultural Business Communication:
Players, Strategies, Successes and Desirables

Specialised Language and Specialised Action – Identities and Alterities
 

13-16 NOVEMBER 2008
Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, Faculty of Philosophy II;
LSK Specialised Intercultural Communication

The European Union has declared the year 2008 as the European Year of intercultural dialogue. This year’s Annual Symposium of the International Association Language and Business scheduled to take place at the Humboldt University in Berlin will at the same time also be the crowning event to end the Faculty’s activities within the scope of this European Year of intercultural dialogue.

First Announcement and Call for Papers

Intercultural business communication is a field on which various players from the most varied sectors of society jointly exercise their activities. Viewed historically, this can cover the entire spectrum from the earliest barter practices and small merchants and the negotiating requirements to achieve their aims through to the modern international economic network of highly developed corporations with division of labour together with their negotiation, contracts and marketing mechanisms. All of these processes are intimately linked with and dependent upon language for communication, cultural competence and translation skills. This symposium will address these issues – encompassing history, the present time and the future.


Topics:


(1) Sociocultural dimensions
Strategies for knowledge transfer; intercultural communication under the aspect of globalisation; business communication as the door-opener for intercultural communication; interculturality and internationality as opportunity or problem; business between cultures.

(2) Multilinguality –comprehension-in-the-field
The role of national and regional languages and of English – but not forgetting German as well - in present and future intercultural business communication; the European principle of multilingualism in intercultural business communication;

(3) Concepts and their sources
The history of intercultural business communication; prejudice, stereotype patterns, collective images;

(4) Self-conception and practical implementation
Needs for future training in intercultural communication and compliance with the Bologna process; learning aids: state-of-the-art, critical appraisal, systematics; new media as information vehicles and to enable contacts


Target groups:

The organisers of this symposium cordially invite specialists in intercultural communication from business, the language industry and from language and translation management as well as

Scientists and specialists from such different disciplines as business sciences, economics, marketing, history of economics, translation sciences, languages and cultural studies, semiotics; corporate historians and archivists

Trainers and communication enablers from applied rhetoric and intercultural communication at management level; trainers in intercultural communication;

Technical writers, translators/interpreters, terminologists;

Interested fellow specialists.
 

Proposals for papers for the symposium accompanied by a brief abstract (max. one standard page) and a brief biography of yourself, including contact data, should be submitted by 31 July 2008 to:

Manfred Schmitz, IALB Secretary
c/o Intertext Fremdsprachendienst e.G.
Greifswalder Str. 5
D-10405 Berlin

E-Mail: manfred.schmitz@intertext.de
Fax: +49 30 42101702
 

Organisers:

International Association Language and Business

Humboldt University, Berlin, Philosophical Faculty II,
LSK Specialised Intercultural Communication

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hartwig Kalverkämper
Hartwig.Kalverkaemper@romanistik.hu-berlin.de

Dr. Larisa Schippel
Larisa.Schippel@staff.hu-berlin.de