I VISITED a specialist language centre in York the other day. Its main line of business is teaching professional and business English to people from big businesses across the rest of Europe and Scandinavia.

An interesting aspect is that it also helps its clients understand the British way of working. The way we do business is in some respects quite different from, say, the Italian approach, and different again from the way German businesses operate. As we went round, I noticed a number of important words had been written on a white board. "Sandwich lunch", for example. "British sense of humour". Even "pub culture" was up there!

The delegates on this particular course were all people who expect to work with British clients in the future. It will be easier for them to sell products and services to British companies now that they understand the British character and way of working. Now if they are learning about us, shouldn't we be learning about them? When we want to export to Europe, we assume - often rightly - that English will be spoken, and we use this as an excuse not to learn other languages.

Unfortunately, we also assume that because they speak good English, they are just like us in other respects. We assume that they will understand and laugh at our jokes. We assume that body language is the same the world over.

Wrong! Jokes often do not translate at all well. I was told of an excruciating evening when representatives of an English company entertained some Swiss clients in a pub. They spent the whole evening telling jokes. The Swiss didn't understand any of the jokes, but being polite people they laughed and smiled anyway.

By the end of the evening, they couldn't wait to get back to their hotel and sure enough, they decided not to do business with the English company.

I can speak from personal experience. I lived in France for a while and learned at first-hand about French culture and ways of communicating. I can now use a hand gesture which is seen as really rude in France but which would mean absolutely nothing over here!

I then moved to a job connected with the European Union. Suddenly, doing business became very complicated, because I had to understand something about the characteristics of every nation. But I went prepared, because I was given training, backed up by useful notes.

And that's the point I'm coming to. If we are serious about exporting more goods and services - and many local businesses are - then we really should make the effort to learn some of the tricks of international trade. These include understanding how to relate to people so that they feel comfortable with us.

Updated: 10:25 Tuesday, June 25, 2002