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Re: don't believe the offshore hype

Subject: Re: don't believe the offshore hype
From: "Guy K. Haas" <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 11:19:53 -0800


Wade Courtney wrote:

Actually, its not the Philippines you need to worry about. It's India.
I just left an Indian owned company (Elance) in September. I worked
closely with the engineering group, who were primarily Indian. Many of
them spoke and wrote better English than a lot of people I know.
Technical writing isn't that hard of a job and most of the skills I use,
almost all of the engineers possessed at Elance.

At last report (from the lead writer of the team of 5 writers in our India office), there is no TW curriculum in the universities in India. The writers come from other professions: engineering/programming/QU, journalism, etc. Though Indian programmers use English in all their education, many of them still seem to write not-quite-idomatic English, and many still write in the rough style of many programmers who ARE native speakers of English.

Over time, these problems are likely to be overcome.

Meanwhile, take a look at the results of the annual Worst Manual contest, sponsored by Technical Standards, a documentation staffing and projects company: http://www.tecstandards.com/2004winner.htm
It seems likely that these samples were written by non-native speakers (and not edited by native speakers) of English.

--
Guy K. Haas
guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com | gkhaas -at- usa -dot- net
http://swexegete.typepad.com/GuysBlog
Software Exegete in Silicon Valley


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RE: don't believe the offshore hype: From: Wade Courtney

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