Business Language Special Projects

Business Turkish

"Cultural Interviews with Turkish-Speaking Executives" is a compilation of over 700 brief video clips in which Turkish executives discuss cultural issues that are of interest to North Americans.  Over 50 Turkish-speaking professionals offer their opinions on a variety of topics related to negotiation, professional activities, language, social situations, and scheduling in Turkish culture.  The objective of the interviews was three-fold: First, provide practical cultural information about business topics.  Second, the interviews provide vocabulary in areas within a professional setting.  Third, these materials provide non-native speakers of Turkish with multiple examples of natural speech.

The creation of these materials has been a joint project between the Centers for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) at the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham Young University, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, and the National Middle East Language Resource Center at Brigham Young University.  Professor Orlando Kelm coordinated the recording of interviews, the digitization of the clips, and the design of the web page.  Thanks goes to Hayriye Kayi, Abdulkadir Nagac and Omer Kanca at UT for their work in digitizing and transcribing. Thanks goes to Okan Cakir at BYU for coordinating the transcripts and translation. We also recognize Metin Atmaca for his work in video taping informants in Turkey.

More information can be found at http://www.laits.utexas.edu/orkelm/turkish/index.html.