But, what if you and your customer don't speak the same language? What if you speak English, but your customer speaks French? What can you do to ensure you correctly understand your customer, and your customer correctly understands you?

One approach is to have your customer write things in French and you take those writings to someone else to translate for you. This is obviously a slow and cumbersome method. A second approach is to hire an interpreter to be available in real time. Yeah, like we all have money for that....

A third, and very cost-effective approach, is to have an electronic French<->English translator.

Now you can greatly facilitate communication and reduce misunderstandings. This means you no longer have to give up business with French-speaking people or pay through the nose for the privilege. Nor do you need to get across a potential minefield of misunderstandings.