Veratix Technologies Ltd.



	Breaking the Language Barrier


	Canadian Resources Review - December 1994/January 1995 By Tara August

	With the globalization of today's marketplace, companies are looking beyond their borders to expand their business opportunities. "In the case of most technical companies that work abroad." says Ken Lowe of KW Lowe & Associates, "they have to handle information across two languages and also across two cultures." More often than not, technical information is miscommunicated or lost in the translation process. Lowe has developed a dual language production tracking system to help bridge the communication gap for Canadian engineers working in Russia.

	PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. and Canadian Fracmaster Ltd. are using Lowe's system in a joint venture project in Nizhnevartovsk, Russia, where they are working on upgrading oil wells. "It has resulted in more efficient engineering." says Ken Willis, senior production engineer at PanCanadian. That's exactly the result Lowe was hoping for when he developed the program a year ago.

	A former reservoir engineer at Amoco Canada, Lowe began his own consulting business three years ago. He accepted a contract teaching position with the Petroleum Industry Training Service (P.l.T.S.) and was sent overseas to teach Western processes to a group of petroleum engineers in Russia. While he was there, he saw and experienced numerous communication problems with the Russian employees.

	Few of the Russian engineers used computers to compile their data, he says. In addition to that, Canadians were having difficulty exchanging ideas with the Russians because the highly technical information and terms they were using were misunderstood or translated incorrectly by many of the interpreters.

	Lowe has developed a computer program that operates in both English and Russian. Lowe's software gives Canadian and Russian engineers, working on the same project direct access to the same database of information. The Russian engineers gather the data and enter it into a computer that uses their own language. Because the program operates in English as well, Canadians can directly access the information they need for technical analysis. Instead of translating hand-written data from the log books and journals of Russian Engineers, Canadian engineers can punch a few keys on the computer and generate report immediately in both English and Russian.

	"What it does," says Lowe, "is it helps you to get access to technical data extremely rapidly, so you can do an analysis of your project very quickly." He says reports that once took two or three days to generate by hand and then had to be translated by interpreters, now take as little as five minutes to produce. This program has decreased the amount of legwork previously demanded of Russians by Canadian companies operating overseas.

	Willis says equal access to information is the biggest advantage in using Lowe's system. He says using the dual language production tracking system has helped Canadians and Russians agree on a standard format for their data. From that," he says our western engineers can take the data and start to use it for doing different engineering analysis." Willis admits however, that there were some growing pains when PanCanadian and Fracmaster first installed the system in Nizhnevartovsk.

	"When we first started in Nizhnevartovsk three years ago, I think' there was may be only a couple of computers in the whole city of 300.000 people" When the joint venture brought in their computers and their programs, the Russians had a difficult time adjusting to the new system. Willis says he doesn't believe that foreign employees should be forced to accept and use Western processes in their own country. He says the two countries involved should combine their ideas and come up with a system that works for both languages and cultures, 'l think that was one of the things this (system) was developed around."

	Lowe believes his dual language program has helped increase teamwork between Canadians and Russians, because it eliminates the frustration created by communication problems. He says it has also increased synergism among the Russians, "Before," he says, "they would carry all of their data in their own personal logs. Now, it's all out for everybody to see . . . Now they try to work together and try to increase productivity together."

	The basic cost of the dual language system is $10,000. From there, the system is configured and custom-designed to the client's technical requirements. By the time the program has been completely customized. Lowe says most systems end up at an average price of $20,000 to $25,000, He adds however, that a company can recover their initial investment quite quickly. If using his system can help engineers increase the production of one well by 25 to 30 per cent, he says the cost of the system can be recovered in as little as two or three months.

	The dual language software has applications outside the petroleum industry as well, "We're starting to branch out already," he says Lowe has developed Spanish and Indonesian language versions of his product, and is currently working on a Chinese language version. "The future looks very, very good for us," he says.

	Lowe says he is filling a demand that nobody else has met. He says that people are beginning to realize they may have to look outside Canada in order to maintain their profits. When Canadian companies take their business over-seas, the foreign employees often wonder why they have to do everything in Engish. "You're operating in their country, says Lowe. "and maybe everything should be in their language. So what we have now is a compromise."