As others see us

One Sunday around 1785, while at church, the great Scottish poet Robert Burns noticed a head louse crawling over the headgear of the young woman sitting in front of him. She and her cranial parasite were made famous by his subsequent ode ‘To a Louse’.

The balloon craze had struck Scotland the previous year, James Tytler, the founder of the ‘Encyclopaedia Brittanica’ and Burns’ later associate, becoming the first Briton to fly. Thereafter the Italian aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi flew nearly 40 kilometres from London. As a result, in Scotland the balloon-shaped, 600 millimetre high ‘Lunardi’ bonnet became the mode.

The young woman of Burns’ poem was wearing a ‘Lunardi’, the showiness of which he contrasted with the vulgarity of the louse. Ultimately, it is clear that the Caledonian bard was not addressing the louse, but the pretentiousness of social climbers, such as the young lady - whom he brings down by addressing as ‘Jenny’.

Burns, who wrote in the ‘Auld Scots Tongue’, the old dialect of English spoken in the lowlands of Scotland, finished with one of his most oft-quoted verses;

A vibrant campaign to promote Sri Lankan tourism abroad, vital

‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us
An’ ev’n Devotion’
Translated into Standard English, this means;
‘Oh, that some God would give us the very smallest of gifts
To be able to see ourselves as others see us
It would save us from many mistakes
and foolish thoughts
We would change the way we look and gesture
and to how and what we apply our time and attention.’
Modern world

Seeing ourselves as others see us is not, unfortunately, a Sri Lankan gift. We tend, as a nation, to be wrapped up in ourselves (a common insular habit). Our own high estimation of ourselves is exemplified by the many school students who, when asked to identify Sri Lanka on the world map, generally point to the imposing bulk of Madagascar, sitting by the African continent (which, presumably, they think is India).

In the modern world, it is necessary for a country to project to the outside world a fairly good image of itself if it expects to attract investment and tourists. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka has not fared all that well on that score, mainly due to a wide difference between our self-perception and the way others see us.

This divergence in points of view has meant that much of our propaganda, political, commercial and cultural, has failed to get across. On the other hand, the country’s adversaries, most notably the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, went to great lengths to present their own case from the angle of the outside observer.

Even now, with the obvious progress being made by the country, Sri Lanka’s advocates fail to make headway overseas due to problems in presentation, arising from this differing world-view. Many foreigners who come to Sri Lanka are surprised to find how modern everything is and how the smoking remains of battles are not immediately visible everywhere. This in itself speaks volumes about how badly we are presented to the outside world.

Hospitality industry

Sri Lankans do not generally recognise what foreigners want to know and how they look at things (which, of course differs from country to country and region to region).

For example, if we examine how our hospitality industry presents itself, we find that very little information is available on the Internet, which is the principal medium through which people in the First World obtain information and make payments.

However, we have not really attuned ourselves to use it in the best possible manner. If a foreigner wants to make a hotel booking, for example, he will go on the Internet and look for suitable lodgings in a good location, together with reviews posted by previous users.

Very few of our hotel websites provide the information they require, and they must find suitable accommodation through an overseas website (such as Agoda or Tripadvisor) which provide information, reviews and ratings, not only for hotels but for localities. Unfortunately, these websites are remote from us and they cannot really provide the full local picture. They do, at least, try to fill the reader in on what they most require to know.

Target audience

We could learn a lot from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is probably the best propaganda organisation in the world. The business end of the BBC World Service Television is manned by its pool of newscasters and presenters, who are a fairly good mix of ethnic types.

They tend to speak in neutral accents - which are better understood by outsiders - as compared to the heavy regional accents (as intelligible to as Burns’ language) of those employed in the home services.

Some years ago the Cable News Network (better known as CNN), a US Corporation, found it was losing ground to the BBC because it stuck to American reporters and newscasters. In addition to speaking exclusively in Yankee accents, they spoke at a much faster speed - which is required in America, to fit in as many commercials as possible in between news items.

Consequently, CNN International (the equivalent of the BCC World Service) employed more overseas personnel - including Australians, who provided a language bridge between people used to Standard English and to American English.

We could begin by employing overseas volunteers as advisers and consultants, who would provide a fresh insight into how we present things. For example, this writer learned just recently from a Briton that Sri Lanka’s 3G mobile telecommunications technology is superior to Britain’s, something that we should certainly be able to exploit (which we don’t).

However we set about it, it is vital for our country to start presenting itself in a manner attuned to the target audience.