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On Thursday, Sept. 3rd Udo Hennig, a partner on the HandsOnTurkish project, attended the German-Turkish Economic Forum hosted by the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) and supported by the Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce (TD-IHK, Cologne, Berlin) as well as the Euro-Mediterranean-Arab Association (EMA, Hamburg).

The forum proved once again how important German-Turkish economic cooperation is for both countries. At the same time experts highlighted where, for German companies in Turkey and respectively Turkish companies in Germany, obstacles have to be overcome for business activities to be successful. One of these obstacles clearly is a lack of cultural competence when entering business negotiations.

In the course of the event Udo was able to introduce HandsOnTurkish to a number of interested experts, e.g. Rolf A. Königs, President of the Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce (TD-IHK), Frank Kaiser, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the German-Turkish Chamber of Commerce (AHK, Istanbul) and Christian Wulff, President of the Euro-Mediterranean-Arab Association and President of Germany (retd.) who also showed great interest in Pendragon’s Arabic course (www.arabiconline.eu). – In his presentation Mr. Wulff pointed out the importance of language and cultural competence on the part of German business partners when trying to establish business relationships with Turkish partners.

HandsOnTurkish is a new initiative, funded by the European Union and developed by a pan-European consortium of publishers, developers and programmers. The project’s aims are to develop innovative eLearning resources for business and vocational learners and to equip them with the necessary linguistic tools and cross-cultural understanding in order to undertake effective business in Turkey. As mentioned above, a lack of cultural competence can lead to costly errors. The HandsOnTurkish will aim to mitigate this obstacle and thus improve the chances for success for both European and Turkish businesses.

The HandsOnTurkish team have so far developed a fully comprehensive online course of Turkish, as well as apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. The team have also recently developed a test.

Articles about culture, business and language can be read on the HandsOnTurkish blog which is updated weekly.

 


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