by Jennifer O Neill
We often hear about the advantages of being fluent in a second language such as when visiting a foreign country on holiday. It’s easier to eat, drink and be merry when you can speak with those around you. But what about the professional advantages?
I’ve been reading a few blogs and newspaper articles recently that discuss multilingualism.
- The Language Bridge
- Web pages for the EU Commissioner for Multilingualism
- Column in the Guardian about British linguistic skills
They have made me think about our profession, technical communication, and how it connects with other languages and cultures. We now work in a global marketplace and increasingly are involved with planning, writing, and distributing documentation that cross linguistic and cultural borders. Although most of us work and write in English, does it help us professionally as technical writers to be fluent in other languages? Are employers interested in such a skill?
If you’re based in Europe having another language certainly gives you more freedom to move between countries for work, particularly if you hold an EU passport. Fluency helps us deal with the various bureaucracies that invariably arrive when living in a different country. We become more aware of the diversity of life and can take part in it. We can speak with colleagues in their language. I’m fluent in French so can communicate with my colleagues in France, Belgium and Switzerland in their language, which they appreciate. Communication becomes more shared.
English today is the global linga franca. As a result many English speakers unfortunately don’t see the point in learning another language. Are many of the professional advantages of having a second language only apparent when you are the foreigner rather than the language? My last two jobs both preferred candidates to have a second language as well as good English. Admittedly both were in French-speaking countries.
Yet I think having another language is useful professionally even if you’re not based in a foreign country. We know what it’s like to read technical documents in a second language. Although such fluency isn’t a requirement when writing for a global market, it can help us to be more aware of the consequences of writing clear, concise, and direct information that is easy to translate as well as understood by those reading in their second language.
The practicalities of localisation can become more “alive”. Simply reading documents in other languages can help us appreciate the impact of such issues as text expansion due to translation (particularly around graphics) and inconsistent terminology. In some of my company’s datasheets I discovered that we had six different ways of writing “operating temperature” in English, which translated into four different ways in French and three in Spanish. Ouch!
If you’re fluent in more than one language, what advantages has it brought you professionally in your work as a technical communicator?
Tags: linguistics, localisation, multilingual, technical communication
I’m French and work/write only in English. I studied British English and I’m now working for an international company based in the USA. So we (tech writers) are requested to write American English for non-native English speakers. For this reason, it does help me to be fluent in another language, it gives me the required distance to know what is easily understandable and what is not.
If you don’t live in a foreign country (and don’t work in a foreign language), it is difficult to maintain a useful working level of competence in a different language. Where it is beneficial to be able to converse in other languages is when you work in a multi-national team. Simple courtesies are often appreciated. But when you don’t?
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