My poor English skills almost ruined my business

In 2014 my company, a supplier of construction steel, received an order of over 2,000 tons of steel that are tailor-made for a major infrastructure project in southern Vietnam. The developer and supervising team are both foreign companies.

I requested one of the top steelmakers in Vietnam to make the order. After 700 tons of delivery, the supervisors from the U.K. informed me that the steel was not up to par and decided to stop all delivery.

I had 20 days to find a new steelmaker. After 10 days, I could not find any local firm that could produce this specific order. Had I failed to keep the deal going, my company would have been required to pay major compensation and even faced legal risks.

I decided to reach out to foreign steelmakers in Australia, Taiwan, India and Russia, but due to my limited English skills, I had trouble communicating with them, especially when talking about highly-technical steel specifications.

With no other option, I had to ask my son to quit his job as a foreign-invested company to work for me. He was able to communicate smoothly with the foreign factories and even brought new foreign customers to me afterward.

This shows that English as a second language is crucial in Vietnam as the country grows rapidly with increasing demand among local and foreign businesses in communications.

We cannot bring an interpreter to all business meetings. We need to be able to communicate in English to speed up business processes.

Even ethnic Vietnamese in mountainous areas know that with English they can sell their handmade products much easier. The same principle applies to major businesses.

*This opinion was translated into English with the assistance of AI. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress’ viewpoints.