Cultural Differences

by Heidi Walsh, Webmistress
Heidi's Website Awards (award program closed)
15 June 2001

Print Version

Differences in culture and mentality have always been a big problem when it comes to international understanding. People from other countries have different languages, different tastes, and different ways of looking at things. Now the Internet offers us the opportunity to overcome this problem. People from different countries can get together on the Internet to exchange ideas and learn from each other.

International understanding can only be reached if we are willing to treat people from other countries with respect and as equals. People from other countries may be different, but no one is superior. We all have similar desires and capabilities.

A Trip to the New World

When I went on my first virtual trip to the United States about three years ago, I got a big surprise. There were not many personal homepages in Germany at that time, but I soon found out it was completely different in America. Personal pages were everywhere. They were so different from the few in Germany, I found myself in a completely new world.

First, the designs were different. The German sites all looked rather sober — boring actually. Grey, black and white were about the only colours used. In the States I found sites with very colourful pages, tables with wide borders, pretty flowers, little angels and lots of other things like that.

What surprised me most were the topics of the American homepages: religious sites openly worshipping Jesus, sites worshipping husbands, sites of mothers mourning their dead children, patriotic sites — all this was new to me. You wouldn't find many, if any, personal sites like that in Germany. These topics are much too private. In Germany you would never ever put anything patriotic on your homepage, unless you didn't mind being called a fascist and a Nazi.

What's the Problem?

I think most Americans are much more emotional, outgoing and eloquent than Germans. We tend to be sober and introverted. We talk less and use fewer words on the whole. What has this got to do with award programs? Well, I'll try to explain.

Recently I translated the award program of an European friend from English into German. It took me quite a while — much longer than I had expected. I didn't have trouble translating the sentences; that was not the problem. The problem was making it sound right to German ears.

Why is that? Well, the way you say things might sound right in one country but be considered exaggerated or even pompous in another. This often happens with literal translations from English to German. And there are problems the other way, too. If you try to translate a German award program into English sentence by sentence, it will sound rather harsh and unfriendly to American ears, although it is not meant to be that way.

As a result, I ended up shortening my friend's award program to make everything sound right to Germans. I removed all the parts that I knew would cause problems and just left in the essentials.

I myself lead a double life (although not exactly like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). I actually have two award programs: one for my German pages and another for my English pages. Please don't misunderstand. The criteria are exactly the same and the award applications are treated in the same way, but the German version is shorter and a lot simpler.

What Are the Differences?

It starts with the purpose or mission of an award program. I would never even dream of saying things like "I want to make the Internet a better place" in my German awards program. I wouldn't be taken seriously any more and would be thought of as pretentious and ostentatious.

I have lived under the constant fear that somebody would find out about my international program, and I'd be stoned in public in German award forums. Well, it's not as bad as that, but there is some truth to it.

I have had considerable problems wording the purpose of my awards program so that it doesn't sound wrong to me and to German ears in general, which are very sensitive to extravagant statements. And the above example is only one of many statements that do not sound right in German award programs. A few others are discussed below.

Code of Ethics

I started modifying the international version of my award program recently in order to prepare it for display on my German site. The first modification was my "Code of Ethics" statement.

To have a declaration of ethics, an ethics statement, or a code of ethics seems to be mandatory on international award sites. What is the reason for this? If you want to find out whether an award giver is fair, just take a look at his program and winners' list. Besides I have always felt very uncomfortable with the wording of ethics statements. To Europeans they tend to sound extravagant, but I have got to know a certain American weakness for serious statements.

I was in a dilemma here. Should I just drop the ethics statement entirely, as I did in my German version? That would probably have disturbed my international applicants and I didn't want that. In the end I reduced it to exactly two sentences, just the essentials, which I can also post on my German pages without it sounding out of place.

Privacy Policies

I have come across quite a few American award programs recently that demand a "Privacy Policy" or the applicant will lose points. Another statement! Privacy policies on personal homepages in Europe are quite unheard of. What does this mean for the award seeker? Should he put the demanded statements on his site to score well with a prestigious American award program? He could, of course, but it would make him look ridiculous in his own country if he Americanized his site in this way.

Although privacy policies are out of place on personal sites, they should really be made mandatory for German award programs, which receive personal information when award seekers apply for their awards. We can learn from American programs in that respect.

Laudatios

On the other hand, award seekers from the States have problems with a very common criterion in German award programs. This criterion requires that you display the awards you have won together with the "laudatio."

The laudatio, the email that comes with the award, is very important to Germans. There are many people who measure the quality of an award program by the written laudatio they receive. A lot of Americans consider this private and just display the award without the laudatio, which is understandable.

Quite a few German award givers even display the emails they write on their winners' pages. I consider this unnecessary, even embarrassing, but the majority of award seekers and givers in Germany seem to think differently.

Status Lists

On many German award pages you find a status list with the names and URLs of the applicants. In the worst case, they have negative comments next to the non-winners. Rainer Klein discussed this problem in his article, Award Status Pages, and I agree wholeheartedly with his comments.

It's a habit so typical of many Germans to meticulously keep statistics on every subject they hear of. This includes status lists that show a big red cross after the name and the URL of an applicant, which means he has been "rejected." I find that very embarrassing, too. It's about time German award givers realized that this actually disturbs people from other countries.

What Should We Do?

Of course, we could all stay within our own countries where we are familiar with the local habits, even if they seem peculiar to people from other nations. This would certainly cause us fewer problems. But wouldn't it be a waste of the opportunity that the Internet has presented to us on a silver platter?

Award givers are pioneers in the field of international understanding. We travel the world visiting sites in so many different countries. We should be prepared to keep an open mind and learn from each other. Everyone can contribute something, so let's take the best of everything. Let's not insist on rules that we know will never be accepted worldwide because they conflict with local cultures.

With great joy I see there are more and more excellent American award programs being listed in German award indexes, just as a lot of German awards programs are getting rated by Award Sites! and listed in Don Chisholm's Website Awards Worksheet. It's a good beginning! It is the first step towards accepting the differences between nations and becoming true citizens of the world.