Annual General Assembly 2003 - Alexandria

Session 6 WGIII

Maritime Communication: The Problem of Cross Cultural and Multilingual Crews

Essam El Sayed Ahmed Badawi, Ashraf Mohamed Halawa
College of Maritime Transport & Technology, Maritime Safety Department Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, Alexandria, Egypt
Email: essamb@aast.edu ashrafhalawa12345@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

An individual's cultural background can affect his communicative skills as well as his learning potential and capabilities.

A study by the Seafarers International Research Center at Cardiff University in 2001 have found that The main problem identified by seafarers working with multinational crews related to communication and particularly to the social aspects of communication. On the other hand, Crew members are the most important element to the safe and efficient working of ships Therefore, the importance of establishing a common language on board ships has to be recognized. However, much of this new emphasis in education is focused only on the vocabulary and grammar of a language. It fails to perform other important aspects of communication, such as the context of an utterance, the speed of delivery and nuances of body language as well as common rules of proximity.

As crew members of one ship can belong to various nationalities, they are bound to face certain difficulties in communication, in an environment where misconstruing a meaning can lead to accidents in the performance of various tasks on board ships. However, receiving a comprehensive education and training in cross cultural differences can help crew members reach a common ground of understanding, thus ensuring safer and effective ships. Addressing the problems of communication between multilingual and multicultural ship crew members, and studying the problems that may arise due to cross cultural differences are important aspects for consideration in any education programmes.

Maritime instructors and other related organizations can obviously assist in this education and training process, since they deal with seafarers from various cultures.

Multicultural education can play an important role in promoting better communication for crew belong to various cultures and nationalities.

Resolving this problem can be accomplished by encouraging Administrations to enforce regulations of the related conventions and codes and by ensuring that companies familiarize their crew with traditions of various nationalities, thus paving the way for better understanding and cooperation among them. Likewise, maritime instructors should possess sufficient knowledge on cultural differences.

In the report a concept of the system of training of the seafarers is offered which, in opinion of the author, can help to solve this contradiction, major elements of this system being considered in detail.

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