Martha's Melting Pot

The United States is always referred to as a great melting pot, taking in ingredients from all over the world and cooking them together into a rich soup whose taste both combines and represents all its varied ingredients. Our readers, who buy our translation services, know that the metaphor of the melting pot has an even broader application.

You realize that it is not only the United States that is a melting pot. In every country where social, economic, or environmental pressures move people to leave their homelands and venture out into the broader world there are immigrants trying to find their way. These immigrant communities are starting anew in countries that welcome or, at least, accept them. Sometimes their transition is eased by a welcoming attitude on the part of their host countries; sometimes it is made difficult by old animosities, religious customs, language or racial differences. But whether easy or difficult the immigrants come and settle and begin again.

You are among those who watch the pot. You are interested in how the various ingredients mix together, in how to get the most of individual ingredients, and in how adding a little training here or a pinch of marketing there might improve the overall taste. It is your business to understand how ingredients once considered foreign are blending into the mix. Are they fully assimilated? Do they still retain their distinctive flavor? What is happening to speed up or slow the assimilation process? The answers to questions like these can make a critical difference to your business success.

Here in Martha's Melting Pot we will keep an ongoing eye on the major non-English speaking cultures that are such an important part of the American scene as well as the scene in many other similar situations in countries around the world.

The idea of a melting pot has always been seen as a mixed blessing. The immigrant comes to the host country seeking freedom and opportunity - not in order to shed his or her ethnic or national identity. Yet, to some degree, success in the new country, whether social or economic, requires assimilation. And, whether the first generation immigrant retains the language and customs of the home country or not, surely the second generation, the children of the immigrants, will usually see themselves as fully native in their parents' adopted country. Something important is gained in all this and something important is also lost. How does one retain values and customs that define the soul of the immigrant? How can these same values and customs be adapted to the new majority culture? It is sensitivity to these very human issues that marks successful communication across this delicate cultural dilemma.

Martha's Melting Pot is where we will pay attention to those issues and help you to understand them better. Here we will taste and stir that delicious stew that is a mix of all the cultures that create "us" from "them." It takes some of them, and some of them, and some of those, to make a good pot of us. But the taste is wonderful. It is Irish stew and Creole jambalaya and red beans and rice. It is French bouillabaisse and African-American chitlins. It is Kansas City barbeque with Mexican hot sauce. Here we will bring you a taste of everything that is us. Which means everything that is American, Latin, European, Middle Eastern, Indian, African, Caribbean, and every other ethnicity, race, color or culture that contributes its distinctive style and taste. Together we make up a great dish and separately each of us has a distinctive savor. We will showcase the many ways we complement each other and the many ways in which we are all the same. In other words, we will help you increase your cultural competence and that of your organization.

And we will take you into the immigrant cultures of the world as they express themselves in their host countries. Each month we will feature a culture or a sub-culture and provide you with some useful and interesting facts. So grab a spoon. This should be a tasty trip.

Stay tuned!

	Coming Together: A Melting Pot Look at Cross-Cultural Negotiating