I’ve been thinking about the recent travel chaos that hit Europe and North America over Christmas when air travel practically came to a standstill for days due to the snow. Like many, I was stranded and sought information everywhere and anywhere in an attempt to figure out when I might be getting off the ground. Internet, radio, TV.
Watching the weather forecasts on French TV, I noticed that the weather curiously stopped at the French border. Changing channels to a Dutch station, the weather there stopped at the Dutch border. Same phenomenon on German TV; no weather outside Germany.

Did this mean that there was no weather in Belgium, situated between these three countries?

Not at all. Belgian TV showed me that the country was indeed having its own enclosed microclimate and not sharing it with its neighbours either. But as a stranded air passenger, I was aware of the larger picture-that all these countries were indeed sharing their weather and that by sharing their weather, the weather was having a much bigger impact than if it had stayed as numerous microclimates.

It’s not just TV weather news that can be accused of confining themselves within self-imposed borders. We can be guilty of it, too. Restricting our thinking and work within the confines of our own boundaries, such as narrow functional responsibilities, is unfortunately too easy to do. Silos can seem such comfortable places. Both for us and the information we produce as writers. How much information in our style guides, for example, could be used by other groups in the company but is never shared or has not been set up to be shared? Perhaps they don’t even know we have it. And what do they have that could be useful to us?

And yet, just as the weather has found, we can make a much bigger impact if we get out and collaborate with others. It can be hard to step outside the comfort zone. Yet if we want to develop and succeed professionally, we need to think outside of the box.

We need to be more like the weather. Circulate.

Han Yu, Assistant Professor, English Department, Kansas State University, and Gerald Savage, Professor, English Department, Illinois State University, are looking for interesting stories from technical communicators to publish in “Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators”.

Summary

We request story proposals of 300 words for an upcoming collection Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators. This collection is designed for technical communicators to tell their stories working in international and cross-cultural contexts, working for/with clients/colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds, or writing/designing for audience from diverse cultural backgrounds. We hope this collection will be a venue for contributors to share their experiences and lessons-learned, to inform and educate fellow practitioners, and to demonstrate their value-add to employers and clients. Submissions that meet the scope of the collection will be followed up for full-length stories.

For more information on this and how to submit a proposal, read the full request on the ITC SIG website.

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?