Writing Business Letters Across Languages

Book excerpt: This book discusses the most widespread and acceptable approaches to writing business letters in a readily understandable fashion, exploring rules and conventions based on actual contemporary practices. Emphasis is placed on types of business letters across languages, patterns of thinking, cross-cultural communication, the effect of style, tone and the mechanics of writing, and grammar. This book is written for all kinds of readers, particularly students and teachers involved in writing business letters for translation purposes, in addition to executives, small business owners, secretaries, and salespersons who are involved in cross-cultural communication. Because of its multifaceted nature, this book serves not only as a practical and comprehensive guide to business correspondence, but also as a tool that helps professionals write business letters and understand their counterparts within the contexts of other languages. It provides various examples from Arabic, English and French, covering a wide range of situations and offers practical advice on wording, content, style, and structure. A list of business terms and their definitions is included at the end of this book to help readers understand their meaning and implications across cultures.