Language Difficulties when Diving

[boxcar]

HI all,
Just wondering about your experiences with travelling and language. English is pretty standard in many popular dive vacation spots due to the Dollars and Pounds that come with American, British and other Anglophonic divers, but a couple of years ago on a liveaboard in Thailand, we were on a boat with French speaking staff. We had a mixed group of Swedes, Americans, Belgians, Aussies and French. Briefings were in French and English, with some 'negotiation' of meaning. Not a big deal for us as we could decipher some translation hitches from French to English, but the Swedes (who were fluent in English, but not French) had a few more problems working out exactly what was going on. I wondered about the implications for safety...What are your experiences with this?

Cheers.

 

[diversteve]

What are your experiences with this?

Cheers.

A few years ago in Maui we dove pretty deep on our first dive near some female Japanese photographers who were on the boat. They didn't have computers so trying to convert feet to meters was an interesting experience in helping them to calculate their second dive depth. And they didn't have a lot of English and none of us - including the crew - knew any Japanese. In the end we just advised them to stay above 15 meters for safety.

 

[vjongene]

HI all,
Just wondering about your experiences with travelling and language. English is pretty standard in many popular dive vacation spots due to the Dollars and Pounds that come with American, British and other Anglophonic divers, but a couple of years ago on a liveaboard in Thailand, we were on a boat with French speaking staff. We had a mixed group of Swedes, Americans, Belgians, Aussies and French. Briefings were in French and English, with some 'negotiation' of meaning. Not a big deal for us as we could decipher some translation hitches from French to English, but the Swedes (who were fluent in English, but not French) had a few more problems working out exactly what was going on. I wondered about the implications for safety...What are your experiences with this?

Actually, more and more dive centers prefer Euros to dollars. But that's another story...

Most dive boats in vacation spots popular with European tourists (and this includes Thailand) end up chosing one "main" language, and attracting guests that speak this language. In the Red Sea, there are French, Italian, German, Russian and English-speaking boats and dive centers (and I believe even some Polish ones). When I dove in Australia, the briefings were in Aussie English and Japanese, and there was an Italian couple that had a terrible time understanding them (I tried to help the best I could). There is no reason to assume that all divers speak English. So the best safety for briefings is to try holding them in as many languages as possible (not always easy for the DMs), and to "language-select" the guests.