In work message what feels more urgent - being understood or understanding the other side?
In professional communication which feels more pressing for you - to be understood or to understand the other?
We initially built WIT more around the first situation - when we are anxious about sending an important message across the world, and WIT helps finding possible mismatches in meaning across American, Indian and Singapore English.
Then earlier today one of you, shoutout to @galdayan , kindly asked us in the comments - what if I receive a message from across the world that sounds a bit off to me? Can I use your product to clarify possible misunderstandings?
That felt like an equally important focus problem. Which function would you personally use more?
Before sending, to check how your words may land
After receiving, to check whether you might be misunderstanding the tone or meaning
Also, for a received message, what context would matter most - your relationship with the sender, the previous conversation or the work situation?
Replies
I personally think checking before sending is more important,because you never know how the other side will digest the information,so you need to make it as understandable as possible. When you are receiving information from others, I think asking them directly is much easier. As the quote goes, "Communication is impossible, but we have to communicate." Even if you double-check whether you understand the other‘s meaning, that's not a 100 percent
guarantee—you need to confirm it with the speaker. So if we both do our best as senders, I think it will be the ideal case.
And from my experience in translation, when communicating with people from other countries (in most cases, we use English), I think noticing cultural differences is important. For example, different countries can have totally different opinions about a number. And the scariest part is someone who never considers there might be cultural differences but instead attributes the chaos to the person personally.
WIT
@mindyorzi Thank you very much for the insights! I think we were working with this premise of the scenario of difficult communication where, say, you are in different time zones and cannot easily ask directly. But we do indeed need to communicate and try to understand each other intentionally.
As for culture, I think we have to be even more strongly aware when using English that cultures can be really different. The ease of using the same language sometimes tricks us.
A small personal anecdote - the other day, I was discussing with a colleague from Southern Europe how something like 'Let’s have a coffee sometime', even said in English, can be culturally interpreted as a polite way of saying 'Let’s not actually talk.'
Do you have any examples of cultural meaning mismatches like this?
@maria_teleginaIn China, the number "6/六" carries positive connotations (though it can be used ironically in some contexts). The phrase "六六大顺" is a blessing wishing you that everything goes smoothly. However, in some countries, it is associated with negative meanings. I wonder if WIT can offer some advice on avoiding cultural shock.
WIT
@mindyorzi Such an interesting example, thank you!
I did not know about 六六大顺. It shows that misunderstandings can also come from cultural associations.
I think it should be doable on a technical level, but there would need to be a dataset informing and supporting the judgment - a cultural ontology or data on cultural associations.
Would you prefer WIT simply to flag the possible cultural association mismatch or also suggest a culturally safer alternative?
@maria_telegina I think it would be better to point out the differences, because we can't be sure whether a replacement would be suitable. Moreover, replacements don't always work, since some cultural concepts are simply not translatable. :)
after receiving, and its not close for me. when im sending i already know im unsure, so i reread it or i go ask someone. when im receiving i dont know ive misread anything, and that is the one that actually costs you, because you find out weeks later when someone has quietly gone cold and neither of you can point at the message that did it. on the context question, previous conversation, by a distance. tone only means something measured against that persons own baseline. blunt from someone who is always blunt is nothing, the same words from someone who usually softens everything is a real signal, and a general model of american or indian english cannot see that, because the baseline lives in that one persons history with you.
WIT
@rabnoor_s Thanks a lot for your feedback! It is extremely interesting.
Our premise was that we want to be more in control of what we send, but from the responses here, I can see that there is a real need to be more in tune with what we receive and how we react to it.
And yes, I agree that without an individual baseline, measuring tone might not mean much. A difficult question comes here - for a tool like this, as a user, would you be comfortable sharing the previous conversation information for the context? And how much of it, if so?
Receiving, and it isn't close. When I'm sending I at least know what I meant, so the worst case is that I'm clumsy. When something lands wrong on me I invent a reason for it, usually an unflattering one, and then I answer the reason instead of the message. The context I'd want there is the previous conversation rather than the relationship, because the relationship is the exact thing I'm about to misjudge.
WIT
@asadmalik901 I think the previous context is very important for keeping the conversation going in an appropriate tone. That should definitely be one of the things to consider.
And you are on point about relationships. I can say that I am writing to a colleague, but to one colleague I might write 'Hiii! ' and to another 'Dear Dr. ...' So, yes, a relationship definition may be too broad or relative to be useful on their own.
What you describe about inventing a reason is also really interesting linguistically. We do not respond only to the meaning of a message. We make inferences about the sender’s intention, tone and attitude. If a message feels rude or dismissive, we may respond to the negative intention we have inferred rather than to the actual message. Such mismatches can cause conflict even when no offence was intended.
What do you think would it help if WIT showed a couple of plausible interpretations of a received message, or could that create even more uncertainty or confusion?
for the received-message case, I'd pick neither relationship nor previous conversation first - I'd want to know how much is riding on my reaction. a slightly-off message from a close colleague on a low-stakes thread I'd just shrug off, but the same phrasing on something that's about to become a decision (a scope change, a hire, a client escalation) is where I'd actually stop and check. relationship and history matter, but mostly as inputs into that bigger question of how expensive it is to misread this one.
WIT
@galdayan That makes sense.
My instinct is that for the user the decision to open WIT and check already means that the communication feels, for some reason, important and context-sensitive or in some other way high-stakes.
But I see the commercial point that you are adding - the higher the cost of miscommunication, the more precise a tool one would want.
Ideally, what would you expect a high-stakes message check to provide?
@maria_telegina I'd want it to flag specific phrases rather than give one overall tone score - a single number tells me something's off but not where. more useful would be pointing at the exact sentence that could be read two ways and showing both readings side by side. and for the truly high-stakes case, I'd want it to flag when a phrase could be read as a commitment versus just a suggestion ("let's revisit this" reading as either "this is settled" or "this is still open") - that ambiguity is usually the expensive one, more than tone.