PROFIBUS and PROFINET International (PI) is the largest automation community in the world and responsible for PROFIBUS and PROFINET, the two most important enabling technologies in automation today.
It’s my first PI Seminar in Vietnam and before the actual seminar day, a lot of things are running on my mind… Encountering new country, new people, new culture, and most interestingly, I will be having a translator while doing my speech. My topic is on Industrial Ethernet Network Design (Switched Networks and via Wireless LAN and Bluetooth).
Having a translator is not a walk in the park. First of all, the topic is highly technical, so I need to always think of lay-man terminologies so that the translator will not struggle in translating what I am saying.
Secondly, I need to talk in a pace that the translator will be able to catch up; I need to take care on where I am going to take a “pause” so the translator will not be overwhelmed by the bunch of sentences that I will be conveying without compromising the overall flow of the speech.
Having said all these things, my bottomline is how I will make this speech effective and interesting with the so called “language-barrier” in the picture. I have passion for technology and in sharing my knowledge to my fellow engineers.
To cut the story short, a day before the Seminar day, I spend atleast 2.5 hours on briefing my colleague (Vietnamese) Mr. Luan on how I planned to deliver this speech, on top of contemplating on how to deliver my speech.
Then its seminar day, it turned out that we have 140 participants in the seminar hall. It’s one of the highest turnouts for a PI Seminar in any country. One thing that I personally experience with Vietnamese engineers is that they are very keen to learn things.
They really ask a lot of technical questions, which in effect, fuels my desire to share more and more of my knowledge…and the language barrier that I was thinking a lot is surprisingly not really evident during the seminar.
During my presentation, I observed that everyone is focused listening to what am I saying. Even though its 100% English, I believe that they understand what I am trying to convey. I even ask my PXC colleague after my presentation about his observation on how the crowd responds on my presentation, and the answer is positive.
To all Vietnamese Engineers and Professionals, thank you so much for participating in this technological seminar. Kindly continue to patronate PROFIBUS/PROFINET and Phoenix Contact will be glad to help and support you in your Automation requirements!