Just Semantics...?

We were wondering what the problem was. Most of the NGO’s staff have local university degrees or are in the process of obtaining one, and business and management principles were not alien to them. At least three amongst them proudly declared they were in possession on Diplomas in business studies. This puzzled us all the more as we saw social enterprise business ventures that were simply not viable being embarked upon. We felt perhaps the problems were related to the application of concepts or theories, and a practical session on basic business management; a refresher of sorts might just do the trick. Or so we thought.

The session started well enough, the class understanding SWOT, 4-Ps, business planning etc. But things started going awry when we started doing costing on a proposed business venture. They could not differentiate between price and cost. What is the sale price of this? $2. What is the cost of this to you? $2…?

In getting them to try and explain themselves, we discovered that the confusion was mainly due to the deficiencies in the language. From the English-Tetun dictionary:

• folin n. cost, value, price, worth.

• presu n. price, cost.

Where there is a very clear distinction for us, none exist in Tetun! While these concepts had been constantly clarified for us through our­­ years in school, it had been continuously muddled up for them. We realised: it will not be just a matter of expanding their vocabulary, but their thought processes as well.

Understandably, we did not even dare venture into the realm of wholesale prices and retail prices at that session…

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I asked a staff member to translate the focus questions posed to the staff for this simplified value chain analysis. I wanted them to be aware of the need to be conscious of cost throughout the process. For that reason, I wanted them to estimate cost (including staff cost) and indicate it on the right hand column of the table.

I could tell the staff member doing the translation had to struggle with the two terms. To her credit, she tried to differentiate between cost and price by listing cost as just ‘Folin’ and price as ‘Presu/Folin’.

How much would this clarify it for the rest? I’ll find out soon enough.