The impossible language puzzle of the European ATC and airports industry

Do you know how a Swedish company sells an air traffic management system to the French air traffic control? With an offer in French, naturellement. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a cliché and it is not French bashing either. And this is also not because submitting an offer in French is an advantage but because it is a must. European procurement rules allow such requirements and national procurement rules often make it mandatory.

English is not the lingua franca of the air traffic control and airports industry across Europe. Many tenders are published in other languages and many require that tenderers submit their offers in the national language. Even large organisations like fraport (the operator of Frankfurt airport) require offers in German. Not because they could not cope with offers in English but because state-level procurement rules require it.

The constraints that such requirement put on tenderers are strong, particularly for medium and small companies. Even identifying possibly relevant tenders and getting the documents can become a painful process. Not every company has employees able to read and write in every possible customer’s language. Using translators is expensive and finding a translator who understands the context and industry enough is quite a challenge too. If you think “google translate”, just forget about it. Automated translation is not at this level yet.

Preparatory work in written form across languages is hard. In person meetings are even harder. When representatives of the customer identify a good speaker of their own language in the sales team, it is not unusual to see meetings drift away from English. This is a natural trend and it’s hard to fight. I remember a meeting where a senior colleague’s participation got limited to “Bonjour, je ne parle pas francais”, “Au revoir”, and two hours of silent nodding in between. But handling the meeting amongst native speakers definitely was a plus, both for our image and to avoid too much details getting lost in translation.

Estimating offer preparation costs across languages

Solving the language puzzle from the sales side is not easy. Multilingual staff helps a lot, at least at written stages. Is the language barrier impossible to overcome? No but it is high and must not be underestimated. How high, and how expensive exactly? Depending which strategy you choose, plan for up to twice the time in preparation and up to $50 per page in translation costs if you outsource it and need certified translation.

Note that drawings and schemas don’t translate well. Imagine a block diagram with a tight block labelled “Exit”. Translate it to French and it becomes “Sortie” or “Ausgang” in German. If you can’t use a smaller font size, your diagrams will need a re-design or new layout. Nothing impossible but expensive and time consuming.

To make things worse, you could be competing against a local company. Their offer preparation costs will be lower. If they have the same budget as you do, more of it will go into contents production and polishing. Needless to say, the travel costs of a local competitor are slim to none and their reaction time on short notice is better too.

I often wrote offers in French on behalf of German companies. Writing the full offer in English or German first and then translate it to French was time consuming. Writing a “bullet list and keywords” offer to agree on internally and then write the final offer in French was more effective. This saves time but requires a high level of trust as the people validating the offer never see the full content in a language they master.

Language barrier beyond sales

Even when almost everybody in the industry has a good command of English, national languages are still widely used at many levels and not only because they are imposed by the legal framework. It is quite common to see people on linkedin sharing job offers at their companies, attempting to attract candidates internationally. Their posts are usually in English but often link to job descriptions in local languages.

The whole social media presence of many ANSPs and even suppliers is still too often in their local language only. What to think of an ATM provider form the Czech Republic communicating on linkedin in Czech only? Are they addressing the national ANSP only? Some organisations publish in English and local language and other limit themselves to English only.

EU citizens have the right to work everywhere in the union and the same applies to business relationships. Language barriers makes it much harder in reality. Nuances and details get lost in translation when one or both partners in a working relationship have to use another language, but it usually works out fine. So why shall call for tenders, offers or a job descriptions be posted only in a national language? Is this some form of protectionism?

Some job offers in Luxemburg require fluency in  L?tzebuergesch. This very local language is a mixture of German and French (the two other official languages of the country) but it’s far enough from both to make it almost impossible to understand, even for people fluent in both. This is a well known trick used by companies wanting to hire local people only, bending the EU rules. By the way, only 390’000 people speak L?tzebuergesch, worldwide.

Thou shalt not despair

Closing this article by writing “Always look on the bright side of life” would be too Monty Python-esque but there are contracts being awarded across the language barrier. Across the distance. Despite the local concurrence. Swedish companies sell to France sometimes. German companies sell to England.

Hopefully this article will help you not underestimate the language barrier but also not overestimate it. Bonne chance, viel Glück, in bocca al lupo, lycka till and onnea ;-)

About the author and FoxATM

Vincent Lambercy has 19 years of experience in various technical and commercial roles in the air traffic control and airports industry.

He is the CEO and founder of FoxATM, which provides data analytics, consulting and market intelligence services.

Don't hesitate to get in touch to discuss your needs in these domains.

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