The same symbol can mean very different things, depending on where you come from. An amusing lesson from my days in debating.
When I was still in university, I was an active member of the debating society. One of the perks was being sent internationally to attend tournaments, where we went up against the best the region had to offer, while enjoying side trips, local cuisine, and learning about other cultures along the way.
Once I was in Manila for such a tournament, and at the closing ceremony each team was given a small carabao figurine as a friendship gift. The carabao, a water buffalo, is the national animal of the Philippines. It represents hard work, resilience, and patience. The Filipino organisers were sharing something meaningful from their culture with us. It was a thoughtful gesture.
Which made the Thai teams reaction all the more entertaining. In Thai, calling someone a kwai, a buffalo, is one of the most common insults in the language. It means you're stupid. We all laughed, with one teammate quipping, "I wonder if our hosts are trying to tell us something about our debating?"
Of course, our Filipino hosts knew exactly what they were doing. The carabao is a point of national pride, and rightly so.
No offence was taken on any side. The Filipino hosts were generous, the Thai teams were self-deprecating, and everyone moved on to the closing dinner.
The carabao now sits at home. I've worked across enough borders since then to know that meaning doesn't always travel with people. The same gesture can land as respect in one room, and as an insult in another, and neither side will necessarily realise it. The organisations that navigate this well aren't the ones that avoid differences. They're the ones that build the habit of asking what something means before deciding what it means.
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