Shipping | When English is not enough in regional shipping

When a clarification takes four exchanges instead of one because neither party is comfortable in the other’s language, the cost lands somewhere. In demurrage. In a missed connection. In a relationship that stays transactional when it could have become something more useful.

That is not an occasional difficulty in Jamaican shipping. It is a routine condition of it. Cargo here moves through a network in which Spanish is the working language of a substantial share of the counterparts involved, from carriers and agents to customers, suppliers and regulators throughout Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Jamaican professionals negotiate rates, clarify documentation, and resolve exceptions daily with people for whom English is a second language, if it is available at all.

Translation tools can render a word or a written message, but they cannot supply the speed and context a live operational conversation demands, and a delayed instruction or a misread document holds cargo as effectively as a mechanical fault. Where language is the barrier, the work routes through an intermediary, and every intermediary adds a step, a delay and a point of failure.

That last cost is the least visible and the most lasting. Regional business runs on familiarity and trust, and both are built faster in a counterpart’s own language. A supplier who is addressed directly engages differently from one addressed through a third party and, over time, that difference shows up in responsiveness, in flexibility, and in who gets the call when capacity is tight.

central obstacle

The Shipping Association of Jamaica has responded through the SAJ Academy with a 13-week Conversational Spanish for Professionals programme beginning September 7. The beginner to intermediate course was developed after sustained member feedback, and with a specific reservation in mind.

“Members told us repeatedly that they needed Spanish,” said Akeela Marin, senior manager for business development and communications at the SAJ, who has led the academy since December 2025. “What they told us just as clearly was that they had no appetite for another theory-heavy class where they would conjugate verbs for three months and still be unable to hold a conversation. So, we built this around use.”

The facilitator, Spanish educator and curriculum developer Anthonesha Henry, identifies that gap as the central obstacle for adult learners.

“One of the greatest challenges is not a lack of ability, but the difficulty of transferring classroom knowledge into real-world communication,” Henry said. “Professionals do not simply need to know Spanish. They need to be able to use it. By practising language through scenarios that reflect their professional realities, learners develop the competence and confidence to use Spanish purposefully and effectively.”

Henry holds a Bachelor of Science in International Relations and Spanish from The University of the West Indies, Mona, with postgraduate training in foreign language pedagogy at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile, and more than eight years of tertiary-level teaching experience.

The curriculum follows that philosophy. After pronunciation, greetings and sentence construction, participants move into the language of the job: import and export terms, cargo descriptions, documentation, professional email, telephone communication, requests for clarification and responses to routine client queries. Role plays and simulated workplace scenarios carry much of the instruction, and cultural competence is treated as content rather than an aside. Progress is assessed through oral activities, listening checks, written exercises, and a final integrated simulation. The hybrid format combines weekly face-to-face sessions with online learning, and the class is capped at 20 to protect interaction and to leave participants with a group in which they can keep practising.

courses open to any sector

The programme is one element of a wider mandate. The academy was established to close the distance between how quickly the industry changes and how quickly the workforce is prepared for it, and its courses are open to professionals in any sector.

“Training cannot be something we return to only when a problem emerges,” Marin said. “Continuous development is part of how a competitive industry operates. And, while the academy carries the association’s name, we are not only training people to work in shipping. We are training capable professionals.”

The larger significance is competitive. As Jamaica works to consolidate its position as a logistics hub, the capacity of its professionals to operate confidently across language and cultural boundaries stops being an advantage and becomes a condition of doing the business at all.

Early bird registration is J$105,000 and standard registration is J$120,000. Further information is available from the SAJ Academy at sajacademy@jamports.com or 876-923-3491-2, extensions 4897 or 4903.