Never apologize for yourself

Every now and then I will listen to a presentation that begins with something like:

• I haven’t really had time to prepare for this, but I will do my best.
• I am not really qualified to talk about this as I’ve only just become interested in this topic, but…
• My English is not very good but I will try to do my best – I hope you can understand me.

Although in many Asian cultures, Korea included, Apologies such as this serve to express the speaker’s humbleness, in western culture such apologies only serve to weaken the integrity of the speaker. Audiences will begin to wonder if they have wasted their time in attending this presentation if the speaker announces at the beginning that they are not qualified to give this talk. Likewise, the worst thing to do is to draw direct attention to your own (perceived) faults, like your poor language ability. Most listeners are there to hear content and be informed; they are not there to judge your grammar ability. If a presenter has organized their content well and practiced their presentation, they should be able to communicate their message to the audience, regardless of how (im-) perfect their pronunciation is.

Often, in Korean language presentations we will hear phrases such as:

• 발표시 여러면에서 미숙한 점이 있겠지만 양해해주시기 바랍니다.
• 시간이 여의치 않아 많은 준비를 하지 못했으나 양해해주시기 바랍니다.
• 모국어가 영어가 아니라서 발표시 이해에 어려움이 있더라도 양해해 주시기 바랍니다.

It is important to remember here that the function of these sorts of phrases – to express humbleness – when translated into English have the effect of weakening your integrity and authority. In short, don’t use phrases such as these.

The other thing that second language speakers should be aware of is how they use the word sorry. Basically, there are two kinds of sorry, (1) the apology and (2) the correction. Presenters should be aware of the difference because if they are not they can send the wrong kind of message to their audience.
The long sorry (1) is used to apologize for something – such as for speaking too long or some kind of misunderstanding.

The short sorry (2) is used to signal a correction

• Today I will be talking about nickel oxide, sorry, carbon oxide nano-coatings (the speaker will talk about carbon oxide nano-coatings, not nickel oxide)
• It was Ellis, sorry, Elsworth, who said… (the speaker means Elsworth, not Ellis)

In each of these examples, the speaker is using sorry to indicate a correction – they are not apologizing for their mistake. It is important that the short sorry is SHORT; if it is too long it will sound like an apology. Think of it as sounding like s’ory.

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