Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

You are the beneficiaries of an institution which once drew people into its world to expand their focus spiritually. It now houses an institution which draws people into its world to expand their focus in what ought to be many dimensions. At least that is our attempt as faculty. I hope that my brief comments will expand your focus in one small area. That is the importance of understanding other cultures in being an international lawyer.

While I have titled these remarks "Hamburgers Abroad," my intention is to explore with you some of the problems we encounter as lawyers in international practice, because of a lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of other cultures. I suspect I could entertain you for the full duration of my permitted time with examples of blunders which better knowledge of these cultures, including their languages, might have corrected. One such example is the attempt to translate an English advertising phrase into another language in selling the company's products abroad. The slogan which is undoubtedly familiar to you all - "Come Alive with Pepsi" - translated into Chinese read "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from their graves." 1 Another example is the attempt to translate a foreign language into English. A sign in English in an Acapulco restaurant declared that "The head waiter has personally passed all the water served here."' 2 Rather than attempting to entertain you with the myriad of unsuccessful but humorous incidents of enterprises functioning in another culture, I would like to attempt to show how multinational enterprises doing business abroad tend to have their cultural impact controlled less by written laws than by unwritten laws. Unwritten laws, or the way things really work, or soft law,3 must be understood by the successful multinational lawyer.

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