LOST IN TRANSLATION TRANSITION

Intercultural miscommunication and misattributions often underscore intercultural conflict. Individuals coming from two contrastive cultural communities have different value assumptions, expectations, verbal and nonverbal habits, and interaction scripts that influence the conflict process. Intercultural conflict is defined as the perceived or actual incompatibility of values, norms, processes, or goals between a minimum of two cultural parties over content, identity, relational, and procedural issues. In my opinion, the major characteristic of intercultural conflicts is that the conflict often involves intercultural perceptions - perceptions that are filtered through our lenses of ethnocentrism and stereotypes, and these perceptions color our conflict attribution proces.

Two years back, my family and I went to London for a holiday. We decided to visit Oxford which was seemingly near as seen on the London Transport Map. As reccommended by the local guide, we purchased tourists passes to ride the tube. We made enquiries at the control station nearest our hotel, on the best route to get to Oxford and if our tourists passes would allow us to travel there. The grumpy station attendant looked at our passes and then made markings on our maps, to guide us on which stations to transit and alight at. We got on the train a little lightheaded as we never expected transportation over such a large distance, in London whereby the standard of living is comparatively significantly higher, to be that affordable. Along the way, a conducter asked us to produce our passes for verification. He scrutinised them for some time and then returned them to us, without saying a word. Upon our arrival at Oxford, the automated barriers located at the stations' exit, refused our passes and denied our exit. The stations' officers then came along to inform us of a difference and penalty we had to pay. We were in shock as it was a 'gia-normous' amount to pay for a self-planned, supposedly more economical free-and-easy itinerary, so naturally, we asked why. It was only then that the officers told us that the tourists passes we had were invalid for travel outside central London. We explained how we derived at such a misunderstanding. The officers then lifted the penalty and allowed us exit. As we made our exit, we witnessed a Chinese girl, seemingly from mainland China, crying. From her crying stammers, we gathered that she was in a situation similar to ours.

Although we didn't exactly have a conflict with any of the relevant authorities involved or make a scene like the Chinese girl did, we paid a hefty sum for the lesson learnt. The differnce amounted to SGD$70 per pax, that was $350 for my family of five and this definitely exceeded the original amount we would have had to pay if we had purchased the right, required tickets to get to Oxford. In the case of the Chinese girl, I guess that a possible communication barrier could have been the key enabler for the misunderstanding. In our case, we felt that we had ourselves to blame, at least partially. We should have seeked a second opinion from the locals since the grumpy train attendant didn't exactly answer our question as to whether our tourists passes would be valid. We probably got too lightheaded and assumed London to be like Hongkong whereby tourists passes allow foreign visitors to travel to most parts of the country. What we could not understand was, why did the train conducter not say anything when he checked our passes? Could it be that it was their culture to care less since nothing could be done and assume that we already knew? Or was he just plain sadistic?