Multilingual Business Cards

The company where I work is expanding internationally and new business cards are being printed. We are based in Prague (the Czech Republic), so usually we use Czech characters on the cards. With the English version being printed, huge discussion on the usage of diacritics and titles has arisen.

It is rather clear that usage of academic titles on business cards differs by region and local habits. In the Central and Eastern Europe, people (mainly older generations) tend to be very proud of their academical achievements, therefore they rather insist on writing their title everywhere possible and sometimes even being called by their academical title. The title is a prove of hard intellectual work and a social status, that the person achieved. Though sometimes may sound like an insult.

There is a big difference in the Western countries. I have never seen any title on British, US or French business card. People do not tend to use their academical titles in this environment excessively. Since the titles and educational system varies by every country, I think that this is rather wise approach. Let’s look at an example, in my country, the title “Engineer” (Ing.) is a prove that you have successfully accomplished at least five years at some kind of a technical university.  But move few thousands kilometers to the west and an “Engineer” would be someone who has just graduated from not well recognized high school. Possessing such a title myself, I would not enjoy unknowingly boast with the western qualification.

The discussion about diacritics is much more difficult. Those, who say it shall not be use argue that diacritics does not exist in many foreign languages (definitely it does not exist in English) and having English business cards, we shall use only English letters. Many business cards can be scanned and the scanning machines can not read the special signs so it makes the work complicated.

On the other hand, we shall present ourselves with our own names. Anyone being called “Jacques Chat” would never write on his English business card “James Cat”. However it will be fun, it is not the person’s name. In my opinion, the same applies for diacritics. Sometimes, a small accent changes the whole meaning of a word and therefore also the person’s name. Let’s see another example, Mr. Šídlo (:sheedlo: = pricker) would become Mr. Sidlo (does not mean anything, but evokes the word “sídlo” which means “seat”). I can hardly imagine an average secretary knowing who do you what to speak to if you say with very strong accent “Mr. Sidlo”.

For me, I do always use my name with all accents and diacritics and I never translate anything, leaving my academical title out. Unfortunately, in my company, we have not reached any consensus about the diacritics yet. I hope natural sense would win.

What do you think about using diacritics on the business cards? (As for emails, it’s something completely different and I am the first one who does not use it.