Emirates' international crew explain idioms in fun new videos

By John Walton, February 22 2013
Emirates' international crew explain idioms in fun new videos

Emirates is making the most of its multilingual international crew with an amusing new set of videos explaining proverbs and idioms in a range of languages — perfect for a Friday afternoon watch!

The airline's crew speaks fifty-five languages, with fourteen of them showcased in twenty-nine quick videos at emiratesshareasmile.com.

Want to tell an Arabic-speaking colleague you like the food? Emirates has you covered:

Or how about explaining to a Japanese contact that you'd rather avoid style over substance?

Unfortunately for Aussies travelling abroad, Australian English isn't one of the languages in the video — so you'll still have to explain what "fair dinkum", "you're a dag" and so on are to your international colleagues and contacts.

Overall, these videos are more amusing than directly business-useful for passengers, but we hope they inspire the airline to create more practical language tools on-board.

What's really interesting is that Emirates is spruiking the variety of nationalities on its staff, which could be a real draw for business travellers.

With multilingual cabin crew and a top-notch entertainment system, Emirates could offer passengers a boon with short, sharp, useful basic language courses to view on board.

Just imagine making the most of your 14-hour business class flight to Dubai with a quick brush-up of your German before your connection to Frankfurt, taking a few video language courses — or even the opportunity to spend a few minutes practising what you've picked up in the business class bar area with a native German-speaking flight attendant.

Want to keep up to the minute on everything that's happening in the world of business travel? Follow @AusBT on Twitter.

John Walton

Aviation journalist and travel columnist John took his first long-haul flight when he was eight weeks old and hasn't looked back since. Well, except when facing rearwards in business class.

QF

19 Jun 2012

Total posts 17

They kind of lost me with the English one... Who says "you're the cat's whiskers"? Isn't it dog's bollocks?!


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