This article is part of a series about what I have learned while accompanying, negotiating, and articulating international partnerships over the past decade.
Partnership negotiations, especially in international contexts, do not fail only because of clauses, deadlines, or poorly defined objectives. Often, the stalling happens because the parties simply do not understand each other — and I am not talking about language.
Multinational corporations and research institutes operate with completely different mental maps, incentives, and rhythms.
In international partnerships, this cultural complexity multiplies. And that is where an almost always invisible, but absolutely essential figure comes in — what I will call here the cultural translator.
Not the interpreter. The strategic decoder.
The cultural translator is the one who perceives the noise that others are not seeing. The one who understands that when an Israeli startup says "we'll move fast," it does not mean the same thing as when a Latin American public agency says the same phrase.
The one who softens without omitting. Translates without diluting. The one who keeps the partnership's objective alive while adjusting the layers of communication between those involved.
In my very first job, I accidentally fell into this role when, just two weeks into the company, I was thrown into a room full of executives after someone said "call the girl who speaks English" and asked me to help with Chinese suppliers who were being very difficult.
From then on, this became my passion, even though I could never give a specific name to what I did.
Once, during a family lunch, my aunts were once again trying to understand what exactly I did for work. After several attempts at explanation, my cousin Luiz illustrated it with a scene from the movie "My Name Isn't Johnny" where the protagonist tries to prevent a fight between Brazilians and South Africans in prison by pretending to translate a dialogue in English while omitting parts of the conversation to try to avoid a conflict.
That was the best description of my work I have ever had.
Why is this figure almost never formalized?
Because they are not on the organizational chart. Because they are usually not the one who signs the contract. Because they operate in the field of sensitivity, context reading, listening, and mediation — and all of this is invisible until it goes wrong.
But when it goes wrong, it is precisely the absence of this function that becomes evident:
- misunderstandings that become ruptures,
- agendas that stall,
- deliverables that come out but make no sense.
Who fills this role in your partnerships today?
If you have ever found yourself adjusting the tone of a statement so the other side would not be offended, if you have ever had to rewrite an email between partners so everyone felt respected — perhaps you have already played this role too.
It is time to recognize that in global partnership negotiations, not all success comes from hard power. Someone needs to read the subtext. Someone needs to connect the logics. And that person needs space, autonomy, and preparation to read what lies behind the language.