Career-changer portfolio questions (plus one additional question)

[ethanreese -at- hotmail -dot- com]

Hello all,

I am a career-changer that is looking to get into technical writing.  I've
been an environmental consultant for five years.  I have an M.S. in
hydrogeology.  While that's not exactly related to a lot of fields that
many tech writers seem to be in, I believe that my experience with writing
and editing a thesis (including having to teach myself a digital modeling
program for use with my research) has provided me with at least a little
experience that will be useful.  The writing I do at work includes
environmental site assessment reports, summary-of-findings letters,
general correspondence, and other kinds of correspondence/documentation
that I make up as the need arises.  While I don't have a background in the
IT/technology industries, I feel I'm pretty competent with computers and
such.  Sit me down in front of a new program and I can figure it out
pretty quickly - or at least get a good idea of how to use it without a
manual.

I'm facing the typical career-changer task of preparing a portfolio.  I am
thinking of including:

1) Sections from my thesis - including some of my custom figures made
Macromedia Freehand 8 and Paint Shop Pro

2) User documentation I would write for a freeware program I use to
calculate the volume of fuel/oil in underground storage tanks (it
currently has no user documentation)

3) Some pages I would be rewriting from the manual to my MP3 player.  The
manual was written overseas by non-native English authors and contains a
lot of "Engrish" such as, "Use a caution when handling the product to not
drop as this may cause a hurt or damage to the product."  It's not much,
but I figure it's at least *something* with a beginning format I can start
with and modify the "Engrish" to something more fluid and direct.  (In
Epinions.com reviews, the documentation was one of the biggest complaints.
 Maybe I should pitch a freelance job to this company to "translate" their
manuals.)

That's about all I can really think of, other than using some of the
documents I generate at work (with appropriate changes so clients aren't
identified and such).  How do these sound?  Any other ideas?

My additional question was related to the international market and tech
writing.  I'm currently studying Japanese and Chinese with more emphasis
on Japanese.  Does anyone have thoughts regarding the global market and
which of those languages might prove more useful in the tech writing
industry?  I'm mostly studying them for fun and in the hopes of visiting
those countries someday, but wouldn't mind focusing on whichever one might
provide advantageous in terms of work opportunities (not to live over
there... but just to be the guy in the office that they can call on for
this or that because he knows X language).

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