We recently had a business transaction with a family who does not speak English at all. We did not want them to misunderstand what we were saying so we started a search to find someone to translate. The first job, we learned, was to know something about the etymology of Asian names. Did you know that Lee is one of the most common surnames in the world? And that not only Chinese and Scottish families have made it that way, but also Korean. Boy do we wish we’d known.

In an attempt to be nice, we discovered that our Lee family was Korean, not Chinese, and that the Chinese translation we almost sent was probably a bad idea. Thank heaven we happened upon http://www.certifiedchinesetranslation.com/ and a gentleman by the name of Samuel Chong, who not only helped us with the Chinese translation, but then turned around and arranged for the Korean version, too.

In this global economy, there is so much to learn.