International business is increasingly becoming borderless. An American executive in New York may frequently need to communicate with a Japanese manager of a company division in Tokyo, just as a seller in Toronto may frequently need to communicate with a buyer in Berlin.

Is your business international? Do you think that communications are ever lost in translation? Think again.

Ever heard of the telephone game? It is a game children play where one child thinks of a phrase and whispers it to the next child. It follows through a line of whispers where, in the end, the last child calls out the phrase. It never happens that the phrase is exactly the same as the original phrase whispered by the original child.

It happens in international business communications as well.

Try this following experiment; Google has a translation tool (see below for the link to it) where you can enter a phrase and have it translated. Take the following phrase that could be spoken by any number of business professionals across the world:

"I will arrive in Paris at nine oclock in the morning on Wednesday. Please have a chauffer ready at the airport to take me to the company meeting. Also, please advise my afternoon meeting to have all of the documents ready for me to sign. Let him know that I am excited about the pending deal."

I took this phrase and entered it into Google's translation tool. I translated it from English to German. Then I translated it French to German. Lastly, I translated it back to English from German. This is the result:

"I arrive the morning to Paris around nine hours Wednesday. To have to heat more please which is ready with the airport to be taken to me at the general assembly. At my afternoon meeting adviser also please, to have all the documents which are ready with me to sign. To inform that I become excited on the trembling agreement."

The original phrase is quite comical after translation. The general theme is the same, but quite difficult to understand what the exact instructions are.

Be sure your international business communications dont fall into the lost in translation trap.