Re: Technical Writing in the former USSR and Eastern Europe

[anita legsdin <anita -dot- legsdin -at- watchmark -dot- com>]

I don't have very much to contribute to this subject, just an anecdote.
Last year I visited my relatives in Latvia, and I was trying to describe
what I do for a living. I tried to translate "technical writer" directly
into Latvian, and we spent nearly an hour debating whether or not I was
qualified to call myself a writer at all, since it involved no creative
writing. Poets and novelists are writers, but those of us who document
how to operate a piece of machinery are still at the level of clerks.
That's the impression I had when I was there. It wasn't the kind of
profession, at any rate, that was instantly recognizable. But maybe, for
that reason, it could be a good time to introduce it there--? Russins
are pretty opinionated, though, and very difficult to influence. 

-- 


Anita Legsdin
Sr. Technical Writer
Watchmark 
(425) 564-8135

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." 
     - Sir Winston Churchill

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