Learning to speak diplomatically

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Language coaching at the UN (Photo: Alex Gallafent)

192 countries want to be understood at the United Nations. Many there use English. Some non-English speakers get coaching on how to assert themselves in English, or butt in without sounding rude. Alex Gallafent joins the classroom instruction. Download MP3

• BBC coverage: How interpreters at the UN get the message across
• A short history of long speeches at the UN
• United Nations Language and Communications Program

Read the Transcript
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LISA MULLINS: There’s a lot of talking going on in New York right now, beyond discussions about Iran. The UN’s General Assembly is in session and that means leaders and diplomats from all over the world are in town trying to get their messages heard. Communicating across multiple language barriers is a big challenge and that’s true year-round at the United Nations. Last year, more than 10,000 people took part in UN language training around the globe, including more than 4,000 at headquarters in New York. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.

ALEX GALLAFENT:  There are six official languages at the UN. Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French and, don’t worry, English. French and English have a slightly higher status. They’re the two so-called “working languages.” But don’t imagine that everyone who gets a job at the UN is automatically some kind of linguistic genius.

JODI NOOYEN:  There is no exam required before they take the job to prove that they are proficient.

GALLAFENT: Seems you can just apply for a UN position and say, “Yes I’m fluent in English.”

NOOYEN: It’s really self-reported.

GALLAFENT: Jodi Nooyen runs some of the language programs at the UN. As she points out, it’d be hard for someone to get through a job interview in a second language, if, having self-reported their fluency, it transpired that they weren’t much good. But still, UN staffers arrive here in New York with a wide range of language abilities. And so the organization operates a behind the scenes training program in all six official languages. It’s available to UN staffers and diplomats free of charge. In the English program, Nooyen tells me, there are lessons in basic conversation, so you can chat with the neighbors in New York.

NOOYEN: And we also offer a course called Discourse Strategies which focuses on the language needed for very formal meetings.

GALLAFENT: Discourse strategies?

RAYMONDE BURKE: Yes, discourse strategies.

GALLAFENT: That’s where Raymonde Burke comes in. She’s been teaching English at the United Nations for twenty years. And her course is intended to help students get to grips with certain nuances in English.

BURKE:  To clarify the obscure, basically.

GALLAFENT: Essential in the language of diplomacy. It’s the second time this group of students has met.

BURKE: So we really haven’t done very much. We haven’t warmed up yet. But we are going to do today some sort of interesting things.

GALLAFENT: Burke begins at the whiteboard.

BURKE: Where the blank is here, there’s a word missing.

GALLAFENT: She reviews a list of collocations, unusual phrases common to English but not common to UN staff working in their second or third language.

BURKE: “To be under the impression that,” and “under no illusions,” excellent. And if you have any questions about the meaning or how you would use this you can ask me too.

GALLAFENT: As you might expect, the students in the room come from all over. Spain, Belgium, China, Chile. Viktor Damjanovic is a UN staffer from Montenegro.

VIKTOR DAMJANOVIC: While in our native languages are very nuanced, of course, in what we want to pass onto others. In foreign languages that can be a challenge.

GALLAFENT: Teacher Raymonde Burke moves onto the next exercise. She asks the class to discuss a boilerplate magazine article about management styles.

BURKE: And over here then I’ve put some ways of interrupting that you’re welcome to use. May I interrupt you for a moment, or sorry to interrupt but.

GALLAFENT: On the whiteboard, a cheatsheet for being politely assertive in English. “If I could say a word about that,” or “I have a point to make here.”

MALE SPEAKER: If I may come at this point, do you believe that the lack of personal belief in the goals that you and your team are pursuing will influence the final outcome?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes, and if I may jump here, let me move to the second part of the question.

GALLAFENT: Interrupting is new to Ying Zhai, a Chinese staffer at the UN.

YING ZHAI: When we had meetings in China, mostly we listened to the speakers until the speakers say now is the time to bring up questions. But at the UN mostly people can interrupt. They can jump in and bring up ideas which normally it’s not the way in China.

GALLAFENT:  If Ying knows how and when to interrupt, she won’t be at a disadvantage in her meetings. Raymonde Burke tells me that at the UN they teach four levels of politeness, from extremely wordy to extremely direct.

BURKE: In many of the cultures it’s so much more polite to weave a merry web before you come to the point, whereas American culture, of course, is much more direct and UN culture is maybe somewhere in between.

GALLAFENT: Raymonde’s boss, Javier Zanon, he runs all the language programs at the UN, goes even further. UN culture isn’t just in between the others. In the classroom, it has priority over the others, even if that’s uncomfortable for some people.

JAVIER ZANON: And for them this is sometimes a surprise and we need explicitly in some cases to remind, well excuse me, this is in a UN context, we don’t use these expressions or we don’t talk about these things in this way because we need to show respect to all the members of this community.

MANUEL SILVA PEREIRA: There are 192 nations there, plus there is the culture of the United Nations, so in the end it will be 193.

GALLAFENT: Manuel Silva Pereira is one of the few diplomats in the class. He’s from Portugal. And he plays a starring role in Raymonde Burke’s third exercise, a game she calls “Political Nightmare.”

BURKE: Some of the students are journalists and some of them are politicians, but the politicians have made some big boo-boos and big mistakes in what they have said in their talks and so the journalists are out to catch them.

GALLAFENT: It’s a role play game.

BURKE: Who are you Manuel?

PEREIRA: I am the vice-president. My goodness.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Mr. Vice President, can you confirm that when you were younger you were a supporter of pro-choice? Why has your position changed since then?

PEREIRA: This is really an individual issue and if you believe in freedom.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Excuse me for interrupting, but…

GALLAFENT: The discourse strategies class isn’t only about making yourself understood. For this games, there’s a cheatsheet with useful phrases such as “That’s a very difficult question to answer” and “I’m afraid I don’t have that information at my fingertips.”

PEREIRA: You have to understand not only what you say, but mainly what you don’t say.

GALLAFENT: This too, says Manuel Silva Pereira, is the stuff of diplomacy. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in New York.

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