Do Small Businesses Need to be Multilingual?

The U.S. continues to lead talks on expanding free trade with Europe and parts of the Pacific with the aim of increasing exports to those regions. But before American small businesses can capitalize and begin offering their products and services overseas, they could hit a well-known hurdle: language barriers.

The benefits of knowing more than one language are well-attested. Anton­ella Sorace, an Italian-born University of Edinburgh professor of developmental linguistics, recently noted in the Financial Times that speaking another language is good for business and the brain. “Hire more multilingual employees, because these employees can communicate better, have better intercultural sensitivity, are better at cooperating, negotiating, compromising. But they can also think more efficiently,” he said.

In addition to being able to communicate, bilingual people have what Berdan called one of “the most important professional skills for global workers today — cross-cultural aptitude, [which is] the ability to appreciate different cultures and solve problems while operating in an environment different from what you’re used to.”